Workshop type: Discussion.

Objective: To review and discuss some methodological issues that are commonly encountered in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) systematic reviews.

Summary:
Using the example of acupuncture, this workshop will examine some of the issues that can be encountered at each stage of the CAM review preparation process. Topics to be covered include evaluating adequacy of the proposed question, conducting literature searches, determining intervention classification, defining treatment adequacy, choosing controls, scoring quality, and reporting results.

A presentation component will include a review of research studies that have been conducted to identify biases that may cause spurious findings in CAM systematic reviews. A hands-on training exercise will familiarize participants with some of the challenges of evaluating and assessing trials eligible for a systematic review, inclu ding challenges in outcome data abstraction, methodological quality evaluation, and treatment adequacy evaluation.

This workshop will be modelled after similar workshops presented at the previous four Cochrane Colloquia.

[This workshop was made possible by grant number R24 AT001293 from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) at the National Institutes of Health. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official views of NCCAM.]

Intended audience: Researchers involved in Cochrane reviews of complementary and alternative therapies.

Technical level expected of participants: Basic.