BackgroundRapid reviews have emerged as a streamlined approach to synthesizing evidence - typically for informing emergent decisions faced by decision makers in health care settings. Although there is growing use of rapid review 'methods', and proliferation of rapid review products, there is a dearth of published literature on rapid review methodology. This paper outlines our experience with rapidly producing, publishing and disseminating evidence summaries in the context of our Knowledge to Action (KTA) research program.MethodsThe KTA research program is a two-year project designed to develop and assess the impact of a regional knowledge infrastructure that supports evidence-informed decision making by regional managers and stakeholders. As part of this program, we have developed evidence summaries - our form of rapid review - which have come to be a flagship component of this project. Our eight-step approach for producing evidence summaries has been developed iteratively, based on evidence (where available), experience and knowledge user feedback. The aim of our evidence summary approach is to deliver quality evidence that is both timely and user-friendly.ResultsFrom November 2009 to March 2011 we have produced 11 evidence summaries on a diverse range of questions identified by our knowledge users. Topic areas have included questions of clinical effectiveness to questions on health systems and/or health services. Knowledge users have reported evidence summaries to be of high value in informing their decisions and initiatives. We continue to experiment with incorporating more of the established methods of systematic reviews, while maintaining our capacity to deliver a final product in a timely manner.ConclusionsThe evolution of the KTA rapid review evidence summaries has been a positive one. We have developed an approach that appears to be addressing a need by knowledge users for timely, user-friendly, and trustworthy evidence and have transparently reported these methods here for the wider rapid review and scientific community.

The Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Evidence (SCIRE) is a synthesis of the research evidence underlying rehabilitation interventions to improve the health of people living with SCI. SCIRE covers a comprehensive set of topics and in this issue we present six papers relevant to SCI rehabilitation clinicians (SCI inpatient rehabilitation practices, gait strategies, upper extremity reconstructive surgery, spasticity treatments, cardiovascular health and bone health). The SCIRE used a systematic and well-defined protocol to assess and synthesize the evidence. Each article was scored for its methodological quality using either the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) Score for randomized controlled trials or the Downs and Black Tool for other types of studies. Following the individual study assessment, conclusions were drawn about the accumulated studies for each topic of interest based on the levels of evidence, quality of studies and concurring evidence. The SCIRE project was designed for health professionals to inform them of best practices.

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Background: Primary headaches (migraine, tension headache, cluster headache, and other trigeminal autonomic cephalgias) are common in pregnancy and postpartum. It is unclear how to best and most safely manage them. Objective: We conducted a systematic review (SR) of interventions to prevent or treat primary headaches in women who are pregnant, attempting to become pregnant, postpartum, or breastfeeding. Methods: We searched Medline, Embase, Cochrane CENTRAL, CINAHL, ClinicalTrials. gov, Cochrane Database of SRs, and Epistemonikos for primary studies of pregnant women with primary headache and existing SRs of harms in pregnant women regardless of indication. No date or language restrictions were applied. We assessed strength of evidence (SoE) using standard methods. Results: We screened 8549 citations for studies and 2788 citations for SRs. Sixteen studies (mostly high risk of bias) comprising 14,185 patients (total) and 26 SRs met the criteria. For prevention, we found no evidence addressing effectiveness. Antiepileptics, venlafaxine, tricyclic antidepressants, benzodiazepines, β-blockers, prednisolone, and oral magnesium may be associated with fetal/child adverse effects, but calcium channel blockers and antihistamines may not be (1 single-group study and 11 SRs; lowto-moderate SoE). For treatment, combination metoclopramide and diphenhydramine may be more effective than codeine for migraine or tension headache (1 randomized controlled trial; low SoE). Triptans may not be associated with fetal/child adverse effects (8 nonrandomized comparative studies; low SoE). Acetaminophen, prednisolone, indomethacin, ondansetron, antipsychotics, and intravenous magnesium may be associated with fetal/child adverse effects, but low-dose aspirin may not be (indirect evidence; low-to-moderate SoE). We found insufficient evidence regarding non-pharmacologic treatments.

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Study Design: A systematic review of all sexual health outcome measures reporting psychometric properties for a spinal cord injury (SCI) population. Objectives: To evaluate the psychometric evidence for sexual health outcome measures used in a SCI population in order to (1) determine the clinical relevance of current tools and (2) suggest recommendations for future tool development. Setting: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Methods: Electronic databases were searched for articles reporting psychometric properties of sexual health outcome measures used in a SCI population. The search was

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