Anatomy of a Cochrane Review and How to Get the Most Out of It

The Cochrane Library is a mainstay of Evidence-based Practice.  It is used to support health care decisions.  It is produced by The Cochrane Collaboration, a group of clinicians, consumers, and researchers around the world. 

• Cochrane Reviews are considered the Gold Standard for high-quality systematic reviews in evidence-based research.

• Abstracts for Cochrane Reviews are indexed in PubMed with links to the full-text.

• Cochrane Reviews include completed reviews and protocols (reviews in progress).

• Consist of detailed, structured topic reviews covering hundreds of articles. Teams of Cochrane experts complete comprehensive literature reviews, evaluate the literature, and present summaries of the findings of the best studies, evaluating the evidence--so you don't have to.

• Published by the International Cochrane Collaboration.

Anatomy of a Cochrane Systematic Review

Cochrane Reviews are highly structured and systematic, with evidence included or    excluded on the basis of clearly explained quality criteria.                   

Every Cochrane Review contains the following parts (See sample abstract) :

•     Abstract

•     Synopsis

•     Background

•     Objectives

•     Criteria for Considering Studies for this Review

•     Search Strategy for Identification of Studies

•     Methods of the Review

•     Description of Studies

•     Methodological Quality

•     Results

•     Discussion

•     Reviewers’ Conclusions

•     Potential Conflict of Interest

For a quick overview of the review’s findings, look at the following sections that summarize the evidence:

•     Abstract  - summarizes the objectives, methods, results and conclusions

•     Synopsis - a 100-word plain-language summary found directly beneath the abstract.

•     Reviewer’s Conclusions - an overview of the most important findings and discusses the implications for practice and research.

 

A Note before Printing a Complete Cochrane Review:

Be aware that the full pdf version of a review may be 80 or more pages and contain info not normally considered useful in a regular journal article (data, analyses, appendices, etc).  The reviewers include as much information as possible about the evidence they examined, and exactly how and why they arrived at their conclusions.  They try to make everything as transparent as possible so that others can do their own evaluation of the evidence, if desired. Most of us don't have time to dig in that deep.

Unless you love slogging through metadata, the structured abstract or summary version will probably provide what a busy clinician needs to know about the evidence. You may not even need to go further than looking at the abstract to answer your own clinical question.

 Sample Cochrane Abstract (via PubMed)

Find the Cochrane link on the following Library pages:

• The Ascension Wisconsin Library Services intranet  

• The Physician & Provider Tool Box

• The Evidence-Based Practice LibGuide.  

Cochrane Library - Evidence Based Reviews [Direct link]

Cochrane Search Tips

Questions or comments? Contact Your Ascension Wisconsin Librarians: 

 Michele Matucheski        Kellee Selden

What are Cochrane Reviews and Why are they beneficial?

We all know about journal articles, so what are Cochrane reviews? 

And why should I care about using them for evidence-based practice research?

A Cochrane review is a systematic review that has been prepared and supervised by Cochrane’s in-house editorial review team. 

“It attempts to identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria to answer a specific research question. Researchers conducting systematic reviews use explicit, systematic methods that are selected with a view aimed at minimizing bias, to produce more reliable findings to inform decision-making.” (1)  

In layman's terms, the experts at Cochrane conduct research on a topic or question, gather the evidence, sift through it for biased results and then report their findings in one document. 

I call these reviews “little nuggets of gold” because instead of you doing hours of research and trying to find all the articles, reviews, clinical trials and other materials that have been published on your topic or question, Cochrane experts have done it for you.

As an example, if the Cochrane review is published in 2016, then you don’t have to do research through sometime in 2016. You can rely on the Cochrane review to cover the available materials for this time period. You only need to find updates to your topic or question since 2016. This saves you a lot of time and provides you with reliable evidence based information. Another benefit is that these reviews have been analyzed for biases and reports that information in the results. 

Although Cochrane reviews are gold nuggets of best evidence, you won't find them on every topic.  The database has thousands of reviews but not every detailed question is answered within it.  That's when you may have to dig deeper into our other databases like PubMed or Cinahl.

So the next time you need to do evidence-based research, try searching for a Cochrane Review - the gold nugget.  

You will find Cochrane links on multiple The Ascension Wisconsin Library Services intranet pages such as 

• The Physician & Provider Tool Box and

• The Evidence-Based Practice LibGuide.  

Cochrane Library - Evidence Based Reviews [Direct link]]

Cochrane Search Tips

1. “Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.” Cochrane Library, John Wiley & Son’s,

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/about-cdsr