The Cochrane Library

Mr. Jones is coming back for his next appointment to hear your recommendations about the St. Mary's of the Lake Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program. You've searched the OvidSP Medline database and found a significant number of research papers on COPD. Ideally, you could use a summary of all of the best papers published on the topic, in one location. Is there such a resource?

 

The Cochrane Collaboration publishes "The Cochrane Library", which is a collection of databases. One of these databases is called Cochrane Reviews, a collection of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which summarize and interpret the results of medical research.

Follow the general guideline below for searching "The Cochrane Library" resource in order to determine the answer to your PICO question.

The Cochrane Library Search Instructions

Accessing The Cochrane Library

1. Go to the Bracken Library homepage and under the "Find Articles" heading select "Cochrane Library".


Searching The Cochrane Library

1. There are three ways to search The Cochrane Library: by typing your search terms in the search box, by performing an advanced search or by using the MeSH search option.

2. When you search The Cochrane Library, you are accessing six databases. The databases you will be exploring in more detail today is the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

Online Documentation and Tutorials

1. Within The Cochrane Library there is excellent documentation and tutorials to help you learn about the resource, as well as instructions about how to effectively search for information. On The Cochrane Library main page find the "Learn" heading and with your computer mouse, hover over the heading. A drop down menu will be displayed with numerous options. Read the information contained within these options.

  • About the Cochrane Library
  • About Cochrane Systmatic Reviews and Protocols
  • How to use the Cochrane Library (Scroll down the screen and launch the three online modules. Note: you will have to sign the guestbook to view the online tutorials).
  • The Cochrane Library - an introduction
  • Tips on Advanced and MeSH searching
  • Setting up Saved Searches and e-mail Alerts

PICO Question Reminder

In elderly patients (<65 years old) who suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, does pulmonary rehabilitation in conjunction with current standards of pharmacological treatment, significantly improve quality of life, as compared to current pharmacological treatment without pulmonary rehabilitation?


Searching for Cochrane Reviews

1. Continuing with the PICO question, let's search The Cochrane Library in the Title, Abstract or Keywords box for systematic reviews. In the search box type copd and pulmonary rehabilitation.

2. The results for the various databases will be displayed below the search box. On November 1, 2010, six results were retrieved from the Cochrane Reviews database and 318 clinical trials were found.

Figure 10. Sample search results from The Cochrane Library.

3. Scan at least one Cochrane Review to obtain an answer to the PICO question. Note the plain language summary in the record.

 

Task 9

1. Bring to class the citation for the Cochrane Review that you selected to help answer the PICO question.