2020-2021 Critical Papers Reviewed by Expert Panel
How to view papers: Coloured tiles represent critical papers and their level of evidence. Please click on the individual blocks to see the complete reference list segmented by level of evidence, guideline domain, and year of publication.
Level I: High quality randomized trial or prospective study; testing of previously developed diagnostic criteria on consecutive patients; sensible costs and alternatives; values obtained from many studies with multiway sensitivity analyses; systematic review of Level I RCTs and Level I studies.
Level II: Lesser quality RCT; prospective comparative study; retrospective study; untreated controls from an RCT; lesser quality prospective study; development of diagnostic criteria on consecutive patients; sensible costs and alternatives; values obtained from limited studies; with multiway sensitivity analyses; systematic review of Level II studies or Level I studies with inconsistent results.
Level III: Case-control study (therapeutic and prognostic studies); retrospective comparative study; study of nonconsecutive patients without consistently applied reference “gold” standard; analyses based on limited alternatives and costs and poor estimates; systematic review of Level III studies.
Level IV: Case series; case control study (diagnostic studies); poor reference standard; analyses with no sensitivity analyses.
*Modified from OCEBM Levels of Evidence Working Group*. “The Oxford Levels of Evidence 2”. Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. https://www.cebm.net/index.aspx?o=5653 * OCEBM Levels of Evidence Working Group = Jeremy Howick, Iain Chalmers (James Lind Library), Paul Glasziou, Trish Greenhalgh, Carl Heneghan, Alessandro Liberati, Ivan Moschetti, Bob Phillips, Hazel Thornton, Olive Goddard and Mary Hodgkinson