Critical appraisal of medical literature: Pragmatic approach

Due to the enormous amount of medical information in journals and the Internet, keeping doctors up to date has become increasingly difficult, A pragmatic approach to reduce the amount of information is to select on the basis of the topic, the title, and the abstract. After this selection, reading should not be limited to the abstract alone. Abstracts go short on essential information abo ut the applicability of the information in clinical practice. To read the whole article might be time-consuming, but the validity of the data has to be evaluated prior to application to patients. Copyright (C) 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel.