Annual Evidence Update on Rheumatoid Arthritis (Musculoskeletal Specialist Library)
http://www.library.nhs.uk/musculoskeletal
The team responsible for the Musculoskeletal Specialist Library has searched the literature for high quality Rheumatoid Arthritis evidence that has accumulated within the last year. We have focused on guidance and systematic reviews published before March 2009. As in recent years the majority of publications relate to various aspects of treatment with biologics. Although this constitutes an increasing proportion of the clinical activity in relation to this disease, we should not lose sight of other important developments and various aspects of rheumatoid disease management feature prominently in our update. It might seem obvious that patients should be able to expect the same high standard of care from the NHS wherever they are located in the UK but the fact that their experience varies greatly has been highlighted in a report from the Kings Fund. This would be justifiable if there was no evidence to guide practice but this is far from being the case. Perhaps the most important publication during the year has been the NICE Guideline on Rheumatoid Arthritis. The widespread implementation of this guidance has the potential to greatly improve the lives and outlook of very many patients with this devastating disease.
*************************************************************************************************************************************
The National Library for Health (NLH) Specialist Libraries have been developed to identify and meet the information needs of particular communities of practice. They are web-based collections containing clinical and non-clinical information on the major health priority areas. Each NLH Specialist Library identifies and provides access to quality assessed information of relevance to the community that it serves. An aspect of this involves the production of Annual Evidence Updates, which aim to highlight the best current evidence for selected healthcare topics. Annual Evidence Updates consist of the good quality evidence from a search of research evidence on a particular topic over a 12 month period, plus user-friendly summaries written by relevant experts, and links to guidelines, secondary research and primary research, if applicable. All information included in Annual Evidence Updates has been subject to rigorous selection criteria.
Leave a comment