The Cochrane Library as a Resource for Evidence on Out-of-Hospital Health Care Interventions

Research in prehospital emergency medicine

“…Bounes and colleagues more recently observed that 47.9% of the works published in the 12 major newspapers in emergency medicine had been produced by the USA, followed by Australia (10.9%), and Canada (6.1%) [3]. The comparison between our results and those works confirms the interest of European teams in the specific field of prehospital emergency medicine, European publications outnumbering North-American ones, which is uncommon in other specialties [3,6].…”

“…In 2007, Smith et al [3] studied clinical trials and systematic reviews on the prehospital emergency medicine in Cochrane Library's different databases . They reported a large predominance of publications by the USA (48%), followed by France (8%), Germany (7.9%), and the UK (6.7%).…”

“…Several recent publications report an increase in the number and quality of research articles in emergency medicine [1][2][3]. This is particularly true in North America, which is the source of more than 50% of the research articles in this field [4].…”

Evidence-based Reviews and Databases: Are They Worth the Effort? Developing Evidence Summaries for Emergency Medicine

“…11 More recently, the establishment of the Cochrane Prehospital and Emergency Health Field is likely to substantially augment this proportion. 7,12 Although there is more to be accomplished in this area for EM, the paucity of relevant evidence-based summaries and databases is not the frontier issue for our specialty today as it was in 1997 when the Annals of Emergency Medicine section first appeared. 13 The more pertinent issue is whether and how such resources serve to enhance the use of highquality evidence at the point of care.…”

Knowledge Translation in the Emergency Medical Services: A Research Agenda for Advancing Prehospital Care

“…The discussions below regarding ''getting the evidence used'' must necessarily assume that the evidence in question comes from a reliable source, in other words, that the evidence really is ''straight'' and that there is essentially no question of clinical benefit. Among the commonly cited sources of ''straight'' evidence in EMS are the Cochrane Collaboration (although a recent review found a discouragingly small number of outof-hospital based systematic reviews and trials), 40 the American Heart Association (AHA)/International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) guidelines, and position papers from organizations such as the National Association of EMS Physicians, the American College of Emergency Physicians, and the Brain Trauma Foundation.…”