Chinoy Muhammad Amin, Ahmad Tashfeen, Tayyab Muhammad, Raza Soulat
Indus Hospital, Karachi.
J Pak Med Assoc. 2009 Jan;59(1):5-9.
The recent emphasis on using "evidence based medicine" for decision-making in patient care issues has prompted many publishers to mention the level of evidence of articles in their journals. The "quality" of a journal may thus be reflected by the proportion of articles with high levels of evidence, apart from other criteria. We aimed to determine the level of evidence of articles in indexed Pakistani medical journals.
Two journals were selected: Journal of Pakistan Medical Association (JPMA) and Journal of College of Physician and Surgeons, Pakistan (JCPSP). Based on the information in the abstracts, all articles from 2003 and 2006 were categorized according to guidelines of Center for Evidence Based Medicine, Oxford, UK.
882 items/articles were reviewed. Of these, 270 (31%) were scientific articles within which 51% belonged to the "Therapeutic" and 25% to the "Prognostic" type. Only 27% had a high level of evidence (1 and 2) while a majority of 55% had level 4 evidence. Although there was a higher proportion of scientific research articles in JCPSP than JPMA (36% vs. 25%). no major difference in the levels of evidence was noted between the two journals, nor between 2003 and 2006. Moreover, the results were quite comparable to similar international studies.
The level of evidence in articles in our leading local journals compares favourably with international literature. We recommend that levels of evidence be stated with abstracts in local journals not only to help the clinicians in making decisions on the best available evidence, but also to elevate the "quality" of these journals.
近期在患者护理问题决策中对使用“循证医学”的强调促使许多出版商提及期刊中文章的证据水平。除其他标准外，期刊的“质量”可能由具有高证据水平的文章比例来反映。我们旨在确定巴基斯坦索引医学期刊中文章的证据水平。
选择了两本期刊：《巴基斯坦医学协会杂志》（JPMA）和《巴基斯坦医师与外科医师学院杂志》（JCPSP）。根据摘要中的信息，将2003年和2006年的所有文章按照英国牛津循证医学中心的指南进行分类。
共审查了882篇文章。其中，270篇（31%）为科学文章，其中51%属于“治疗性”，25%属于“预后性”。只有27%具有高证据水平（1级和2级），而大多数（55%）具有4级证据。虽然JCPSP中的科研文章比例高于JPMA（36%对25%），但两本期刊之间以及2003年和2006年之间在证据水平上没有显著差异。此外，结果与类似的国际研究相当。
我们当地主要期刊中文章的证据水平与国际文献相比具有优势。我们建议在当地期刊的摘要中注明证据水平，这不仅有助于临床医生根据现有最佳证据做出决策，还能提升这些期刊的“质量”。
