How to read a scientific article?

Abstract

Medical literature is too prolific and user's guides are necessary to extract useful information for optimal treatment of our patients. The goal of this paper is to help doctors find relevant articles and to read them efficiently for applying the results to their patients. An excerpt has been written concerning the subject by the Mac Master team and the members of the Cochrane Collaboration in the JAMA, the BMJ and on the Internet: a web site is now devoted to user's guides to medical literature. Simple rules facilitating access to relevant papers and interpretation of the results have been given. They have been applied to oncology, especially to papers concerning effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. It is essential that doctors use simple rules and learn how to select relevant articles and understand and use them to treat their patients according to Evidence-Based Medicine Group.