Workshop W49

Workshop registration closed!

The facility to register for workshops has closed. If you have not registered for a workshop, workshop listings will be on the Message Board in the conference foyer of The Burlington Hotel for you to register for workshops that still have spaces available.

Methodological issues in systematic reviews of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies.

Eric Manheimer.
Complementary Medicine Field.
Jianping Liu.
Evidence-based Chinese Medicine Center for Clinical Research & Evaluation, School of Preclinical Medicine, University of Beijing, Beijing, China.

emanheimer doesnotexist@cochrane.org compmed.umm.edu

Objective: The objective of this workshop is to provide Cochrane review authors with knowledge relevant to preparing systematic reviews of CAM therapies.

Summary: Using the example of acupuncture, this workshop will examine some of the issues that can be encountered at each stage of the CAM review preparation process. Topics to be covered include:

evaluating the adequacy of the title for the question raised;
conducting literature searches;
determining intervention classification;
defining treatment adequacy;
choosing controls;
scoring quality;
reporting results.

A presentation component will include a review of research studies that have been conducted to identify biases that may operate to cause spurious findings in CAM systematic reviews. A hands-on training exercise will familiarize participants with some of the challenges of evaluating and assessing trials eligible for a systematic review, including challenges in outcome data abstraction, methodological quality evaluation, and treatment adequacy evaluation.

This workshop will be modelled on similar workshops presented at the Barcelona, Ottawa, and Melbourne Cochrane Colloquia.

Level of knowledge required to attend: basic.