Some of you may wish to do a Topical Review, or a non-systematic review of a clinical topic. While a non-systematic search of the literature will be done, the review should still be evidence-based, to the greatest extent possible. Examples of Topical Reviews include Up To Date, CME Topic Updates in Canadian Family Physician, or Wikipedia articles. (The quality varies greatly for Wikipedia articles, of course.)
The American Family Physician has an excellent article summarizing the key points of writing a Topical Review1. The checklist below was developed from1 and from Canadian Family Physician Guidelines for Authors2.
Careful attention must be paid to adequate representation of epistemic pluralism given the recent rapid growth of bodies of knowledge and ways of sharing knowledge during the global COVID-19 pandemic. This is in response to growing racialization and politicization of the pandemic. To avoid the pitfalls of epistemic racism, robust representation from non-dominant and oppressed populations is highly recommended.
Checklist
- The topic is fairly common in family practice, especially topics in which there is new, fairly important information about diagnosis and treatment.
- A table of Continuing Medical Education objectives is included in the review.
- In contrast to a systematic review, you will not be expected to do an exhaustive search of the “grey” literature, or conference abstracts/proceedings, or other obscure databases.
- Several sources of evidence-based reviews on the topic are evaluated.
- Where possible, Patient Oriented Evidence that Matters (POEM) should be used to support key clinical recommendations, as opposed to Disease Oriented Evidence (DOE). See (1) for a more detailed explanation regarding POEM and DOE.
- Studies of patients in primary care settings rather than specialty referral centres should be emphasized.
- Studies that are not only statistically significant but also clinically significant should be emphasized.
- Therapeutic recommendations should not only indicate the level of evidence but also indicate the magnitude of benefit and harm that would be expected (eg. NNT, NNH or ARR).
- The level of evidence for key clinical recommendations is labeled as follows: level A (Randomized Controlled Trials/Meta-analysis); level B (other evidence); level C (expert opinion).
- Acknowledge controversies, recent developments, other viewpoints, and any apparent conflicts of interest, or instances of bias that may affect the evidence presented.
- Highlight the key points about diagnosis and treatment in the discussion and include a summary of key take home points.
- Use tables, figures to highlight key points and present a step-wise algorithmic approach to diagnosis and treatment when possible.
- Emphasize evidence-based guidelines and primary research studies, rather than other review articles, unless they are systematic reviews.
- References are current, relevant, complete, and accurate.