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Definition: One-page summaryof the evidence to a focused clinical question.
Developed by internal medicine fellows at McMaster University(SauveS. MD, Lee H.N.et al.) in 1995.
CAT elements
• Title:
–Gives a declarative answerto your question.
• Clinical bottom line
–On how this evidence is used in clinical care.
• Clinical scenario
–summary of the patient
• The clinical question
• The search termsused to located the paper (for later updating)
• The study
–A summary of the study methods
• The evidence
–A table summarizing the key results.
• Comments and References
• Others
–Author,expiry date
Limitations
• First is the limited applicabilityof individual CAT.
–Created in busypractice
–It is a single pieceof evidence summarized
–Incomplete, non-representativeof the entire body of evidence
• Individual CATscan be wrong
–First appear as drafts, without peer review.
–May contain inferior evidence, or errorsof fact, calculation, or interpretation.
• They have a short “half life”
–be obsolete as new evidence becomes available.
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