An Evidence-Based Resource for Pain Relief (Oxford Medical Publications)

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is the conscientious, explicit, and sensible use of the current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of EBM requires the integration of individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research. The techniques of evidence-based medicine allow comparisons to be made between how well different pain relief interventions work for the same condition. This text brings together the reviews of these trials, examining the evidence for the effectiveness of many of the interventions commonly used in pain relief. The book begins with a section on EBM methodology, including information on how to assess the evidence, how to find the papers, criteria by which to judge them, what data to extract, and how to then handle that data. The book is then divided into two main sections - acute pain and chronic pain, with each section presenting extensive reviews of many common treatments for managing pain, particularly drugs.