Claire Niedzwiedz summarises a recent meta-analysis of suicide rates among psychiatric inpatients, which finds excessively high rates of suicide when compared with the general population.
[read the full story...]
This review of platform switching for dental implants included 18 RCTs in a meta-analysis and suggests an improvement in marginal bone loss. However, the longest study were only of 3 years duration and the authors recommend the results be interpreted with caution due to the presence of uncontrolled confounding factors in the included studies.
[read the full story...]
Olivia Maynard summarises the recent Cochrane systematic review on motivational interviewing for smoking cessation, which concludes that motivational interviewing may assist people to quit smoking, but does not tell us much about the actual components of MI that optimise the success of the intervention.
[read the full story...]
John Baker reviews a recent participant-level meta-analysis of six placebo-controlled studies, which looks at the initial severity of schizophrenia and the efficacy of antipsychotics including Olanzapine, Risperidone and Amisulpride.
[read the full story...]
This updated Cochrane review now includes 12 trials. However, there is no clear evidence that full-mouth scaling or full-mouth disinfection provides additional benefit compared to conventional scaling and root planing.
[read the full story...]
Do you know that over 1 million hip replacements are carried out each year? The majority of Total Hip Replacements are for people with severe arthritis of the hip that causes pain and reduction in function. We elves wanted to know for someone with osteoarthritis of the hip what are the medium term health related [read the full story…]
Akshay Nair summarises a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of modifiable predictors of dementia in mild cognitive impairment. The meta-analysis finds that diabetes and the presence of any neuropsychiatric symptoms significantly predicted the conversion of mild cognitive impairment to dementia.
[read the full story...]
Elena Marcus appraises a recent meta-analysis of screening for bipolar spectrum disorders, which concludes that the MDQ and HCL-32 tools are supported by more evidence than the BSDS tool.
[read the full story...]
This new Cochrane review included 8 trials, involving a total of 2,876 children finding little evidence to support or refute the use of chlorhexidine varnish or gel in reducing caries or mutans streptoccoci levels.
[read the full story...]
Natasha Clarke publishes her debut Mental Elf blog about a new systematic review and meta-analysis investigating the risk of neuropsychiatric adverse events associated with the smoking cessation drug varenicline.
[read the full story...]
