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SICS Evidence-Based Medicine Group

 

April 2005 Newsletter

 

 

2004 has been a very productive year for the EBMG. There was a significant increase in publications compared with previous years. Five reviews (Therapeutic Hypothermia following OOHCA, Making Changes To Practise, Prevention of Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia, Guillian-Barre Syndrome, Inhaled Nitric Oxide and Prone positioning in ARDS) and eleven stand-alone paper reviews were published on the groups website (www.sicsebm.org.uk). This represents a total of 47 newly published critical appraisals, bringing the total published by the group to-date to 80, by far the largest collection of critical care appraisals available on the web today.

 

The website had grown in popularity over the last year. It currently attracts over 5,000 visitors per month. This has lead to a steady rise in the websites world wide rankings with the webs major search engines. Currently when searching under “evidence based intensive care” the site ranks 1st (Google), 2nd (BT.Yahoo), 3rd (AltaVista) and 5th (Yahoo). This reflects well the large amount of work put into the website by many of the group.

There have been several other modifications to the site over the year: a feedback facility, automated updates and a download section.

 

September 2004 saw the launch of the groups automated email updates. All SICS members should now receive email updates alerting them to new publications or website features. This service is also available to non-SICS members through the website.

 

The SICS EBMG and CCTG held their first joint meeting in June 2004 in Bridge of Allan. The meeting was well attended by almost 50 delegates. A wide range of research and EBM topics were discussed.

 

The following projects are ongoing: Nutrition (Marcia McDougal), Hypothermia II (Chris Cairns), Prevention of CVCrBSIs (David Swann), NIV (Michael MacMillan), SDD (Muthuswammy Pillai).

 

As always, the group welcomes submissions for publication on the website. All submissions to the group are now peer reviewed by at least two reviewers. The reviewers are named on each publication.

 

 

Dr Chris Cairns

Chair, SICS EBMG

 

April 2005