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Scientific Programme Abstracts Workshop Meetings Singapore & More Stipends Prizes and Awards |
SPECIAL SESSIONSWednesday 14 Oct 09, 09:15-10:45h On the final day of the Colloquium, six Special Sessions will take the place of the morning Plenary. These invited sessions provide an opportunity to explore in greater depth themes relevant to The Cochrane Collaboration. Topics include developments in methods, prioritisation of reviews, knowledge translation and guidelines. The format of the sessions will vary but the emphasis will be on discussing relevant issues. Special Session 1: Creating a closer working relationship between Cochrane and guideline developers Special Session 2: Assessing mechanisms for the prioritisation of review topics in The Cochrane Collaboration Special Session 3: Knowledge Translation: challenges for building and sharing Public Health evidence Special Session 4: Statistics Special Session 5: Conducting research on Traditional Chinese Medicine therapies Special Session 6: Diagnostic test accuracy reviews 1: Creating a closer working relationship between Cochrane and guideline developers Room 208 This session has been brought together as a partnership between the Guidelines International Network (G-I-N) and The Cochrane Collaboration to look at the current experience of guideline developers and their use of Cochrane reviews. The session will draw on evidence of the use of systematic reviews in guidelines, and the latest issues being considered by international guideline developers, including a discussion of how the GRADE approach has been designed to reinforce the importance of full evidence profiles, and highlighting areas of debate and issues and/or processes that are controversial. The session will include perspectives from UK, Singapore and USA. Chair Kay Currie, Guidelines Research Program, National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia Speakers Kay Dickersin, US Cochrane Center, USA Kay will report on the issues raised at a meeting held in June 2009 in the US on whether systematic reviews can effectively inform guideline development, with a particular focus on areas of controversy and debate. Pwee Keng Ho, Ministry of Health, Singapore Keng Ho leads the health technology assessment (HTA) and guideline development programme of the Singapore Ministry of Health. He will speak about the issues faced as a guideline developer using Cochrane reviews. Gordon Guyatt, McMaster University, Canada Gordon will give an outline of the GRADE approach and the purpose of ‘Summary of Findings’ tables, and how both are perceived by Cochrane review authors and guideline developers. Emma Tavender, EPOC Australian Satellite, Australia Emma will report on the survey carried out by the UK Cochrane Centre to identify the use of Cochrane reviews in guidelines produced in the UK. 2: Assessing mechanisms for the prioritisation of review topics in The Cochrane Collaboration Room 209 This session will assess mechanisms for, and issues surrounding, prioritisation of topics for systematic review by The Cochrane Collaboration. It will focus on the results and recommendations of a number of projects funded by the Collaboration’s Prioritisation Fund. This fund was created in 2006, with the strategic objective of improving prioritisation mechanisms for key review topics, to better meet the needs of national and international stakeholders as well as the Collaboration’s own goals. More information on the Prioritisation Fund can be found here. The session will measure the success of the prioritisation projects conducted in the context of this strategic objective, and explore lessons to be learned for guiding future prioritisation efforts across the Collaboration. Chairs David Tovey, The Cochrane Library Lisa Bero, Cochrane Collaboration Steering Group Speakers Delivering on priorities: developing and implementing effective collaboration between a Cochrane Review Group and a Cochrane Field Report presented by David Tovey and Lisa Bero Using practice guidelines to determine review priorities: a pilot project Roberta Scherer, US Cochrane Center, USA Prioritisation of Cochrane reviews for consumers and the public in low and high-income countries as a way of promoting evidence-based health care María Belizán, Cochrane Consumer Network, South Africa Prioritising Cochrane review topics to reduce the know-do gap in low and middle income countries Mona Nasser, Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, Germany Piloting and evaluation of a patient-professional partnership approach to prioritising Cochrane reviews and other research Brian Buckley, Bladder and Bowel Foundation, UK; National University of Ireland, Ireland 3: Knowledge Translation: challenges for building and sharing Public Health evidence Room 303 This session is intended to support the exchange of information between decision-makers and researchers in relation to how best to address the challenges associated with Knowledge Translation and Exchange (strengthening the links and information exchange between research, policy, practice and communities). Rather than a traditional plenary session, a series of questions will be posed to panel members and members of the audience. Additional questions from the audience will also be encouraged. The outcome of the session will be a series of recommendations related to KTE research, recommendations for strengthening links between decision-makers and researchers and options for the Collaboration to strengthen its role in KTE. Chair Elizabeth Waters, Public Health Review Group (PHRG); University of Melbourne, Australia Panel members Maureen Dobbins, PHRG; McMaster University, Canada Mark Petticrew, PHRG; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK Tomás Pantoja, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile Rebecca Armstrong, PHRG; University of Melbourne, Australia Lorne Becker, Cochrane Collaboration Steering Group Mabel Yap, Health Services Research and Evaluation, Ministry of Health, Singapore 4: Statistics Room 203 This session is aimed at review authors and statisticians. The first half of the session will explore new approaches for dealing with bias and heterogeneity in meta-analysis. The second half of the session will feature brief presentations on the functionality of different software packages availble to undertake meta-analysis, followed by a discussion with the audience about what additional functionality could be considered for inclusion in RevMan. Part 1. Exploring new approaches for dealing with bias and heterogeneity Chair Douglas Altman, Centre for Statistics in Medicine, University of Oxford, UK Speakers A prediction interval to encompass heterogeneity in a random-effects meta-analysis Julian Higgins, MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge, UK It has often been argued by methodologists that the appropriate interpretation of a random-effects meta-analysis requires consideration of the among-study variability. In practice, however, it remains standard to present inference only on the mean of the random-effects distribution. Julian will outline some arguments why this may be misleading, and present a simple prediction interval for the effect in a new study that encompasses the degree of variability across studies. The interval is appropriate for a frequentist analysis, and approximates a prediction interval from a Bayesian meta-analysis. How should meta-analysts deal with flaws in the conduct of eligible trials? Jonathan Sterne, Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, UK The majority of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have flaws in their conduct, but meta-analysts are often unsure how to allow for these. There is now a substantial body of empirical research on how such flaws bias trial results. Conflicting results from different empirical studies led to a recent project (the BRANDO study) that has combined all such studies in a single database. Jonathan will describe results from this study, as well as recent research on how flawed trials should be downweighted in meta-analyses. He will conclude by discussing implications for Cochrane review authors, and the guidance contained in version 5 of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Part 2. RevMan and beyond for meta-analysis Chairs Joanne McKenzie, Institute of Health Services Research, Monash University, Australia Peter Herbison, Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand Speakers RevMan - Georgia Salanti, University of Ioannina School of Medicine, Greece Comprehensive Meta-analysis - Michael Borenstein, Biostat, USA Stata - Jonathan Sterne, Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, UK Mix - Leon Bax, Kitasato Clinical Research Center, Japan; UMC Utrecht, The Netherlands R - Guido Schwarzer, German Cochrane Centre, University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany 5: Conducting reseach on Traditional Chinese Medicine therapies Room 201 This session will examine a range of approaches for researching the benefits and risks of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), including observational studies as well as randomised trial evidence. Speakers will also review the current evidence base for TCM according to Cochrane reviews, and describe an agenda for addressing the methodological challenges inherent in randomised trials and systematic reviews of TCM. Chair Eric Manheimer, Cochrane Complementary Medicine Field, USA Speakers Jung Nien Lai, Department of Chinese Medicine, Taipei City Hospital, Taiwan Jung Nien will share his experiences of both retrospective and prospective outcome studies to provide evidence for safety profiles of TCM products and early tests of their effectiveness. Jin Ling Tang, Hong Kong Cochrane Branch, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China Jin Ling will argue that as TCM products are already in use, research should adopt an efficacy driven approach, and start by showing efficacy in humans through randomised controlled trials, rather than focusing effort on searching for the biological basis for TCM, identifying active substances, and investigating mechanisms of action. Susan Wieland, Cochrane Complementary Medicine Field, USA Susan will discuss the topics and findings of Cochrane systematic reviews of TCM as of Issue 4, 2008 of The Cochrane Library, and give a brief summary of the limitations identified by Cochrane authors of the evidence base for these reviews. Jianping Liu, Centre for Evidence-Based Chinese Medicine, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, China Jianping will review some of the existing problems with poor quality of clinical trials in TCM and discuss how Cochrane authors can contribute to the research of TCM with regard to research questions, study design, and methodology. 6: Diagnostic test accuracy reviews Room 202 This session will review the role of diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) reviews within The Cochrane Collaboration and the progress that has been made since work on their implementation and development first commenced. Randomised clinical trials are the cornerstone of evidence-based medicine. Relying on randomisation, using comparative designs and collecting patient-centered outcomes provide clinical decision makers with the evidence to support decisions. In contrast, the clinical evaluation of medical tests and markers seems to be focused on their diagnostic accuracy: the ability of tests and markers to correctly identify patients with the target disease. Diagnostic accuracy studies typically include a series of patients, all of whom undergo the test under evaluation and the clinical reference standard, the best available clinical method of identifying diseased patients. It may not be immediately clear what the relation is between randomised evaluations of testing and diagnostic accuracy studies. We will start by considering circumstances in whichdiagnostic accuracy studies can yield the necessary information to support decisions about testing. These considerations can help in the design of informative accuracy studies and, similarly, in planning and performing systematic reviews of diagnostic test accuracy studies for The Cochrane Collaboration. We will review progress made in The Cochrane Collaboration so far with the DTA initiative, the common challenges which review authors are facing, and the likely magnitude of the task. We will also hear about two of the first completed reviews to be published in The Cochrane Library. Chair Chris Hyde, University of Exeter, UK Speakers Diagnostic accuracy and the architecture of medical test evaluation Patrick Bossuyt, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Review of progress of the Cochrane Diagnostic Test Accuracy initiative Jon Deeks, University of Birmingham, UK Physical examination for lumbar radiculopathy due to disc herniation in patients with low-back pain Henrica CW de Vet, VU University Medical Center, The Netherlands Galactomannan detection for invasive aspergillosis in immunocompromised patients Mariska Leeflang, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands |