Some clarifications about SORT scale

[ahsan.nabi]

I need some definitions of following words:
Patient-Oriented evidence
Cohort
Systematic Review (SR)
meta-analysis
Randomized Control Trial (RCT) and blinding
morbidity

Also, I need to know whether should we implement the SORT algorithm to
grade evidences? If yes, then how much detailed should the medical
rules like RCT and SR/Meta-Analysis be used?

Thanks,
Ahsan

[Diego Molla]

All of these terms are related to the topic of evidence-based medicine. Here are some short definitions:

Patiented-Oriented outcomes: these are outcomes that affect the patient's welfare, such as whether the patient recovered from the illness, or he died. Contrast this with disease-oriented outcomes, which address disease-specific outcomes such as symptoms. Even if a treatment reduces the symptoms of an ilness it doesn't mean that the illness was cured.

Cohort: This refers to the group of people that were studied.

Systematic review, meta-analysis, RCT: these are all different types of studies. Check e.g. Wikipedia for definitions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_based_medicine)

morbidity: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morbidity#Morbidity


About whether you should implement the SORT algorithm or not, this is up to you. We won't check how you did it, we'll just check the results you obtain. So if you find that, for example, all papers that have the words "systematic review" in the title or abstract get always a top evidence level, just use that rule.

Diego

[Ahsan Nabi]

Thanks Sir for the help. I will use my final year project techniques of HMM machine learning in that case as a starter.

Ahsan