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NEW!
All Canadians now have full access to The Cochrane Library!
The Canadian Cochrane Network
and Centre, in partnership with the Canadian Health Libraries Association
has successfully secured a pilot for a national license to The Cochrane
Library in Canada. The license provides Canadians free access to the
health information found in The Cochrane Library until the end of 2009.
Sustainable funding will be sought to make the access permanent for all
Canadians. Click here to read more, or
contact j.douce2@uottawa.ca
for further details. The Cochrane Library can be accessed at www.thecochranelibrary.com. IMPACT FACTOR FOR COCHRANE
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews obtained its first impact factor in 2007. It was 4.654 and ranked 14 out of 100 journals in the ISI category Medicine, General & Internal. Although disputed, the impact factor is considered a relevant measure for the importance of a journal. The choice where to submit a paper is often at least partly based on the impact factor of a journal.
We encourage our review authors to cite other relevant Cochrane intervention and methodology reviews and keep in mind that only recent reviews (published new or substantially updated in the last two years prior to the publication date of the citing review) are helpful for raising the impact factor. A review that will be published in 2009 should preferably cite reviews published in 2007 and 2008.
Want to have a say in what treatments and medications are
reviewed by the CMSG team?Fill
out our survey to help us set research priorities and determine where more
research is needed. Complete our survey
here .
PRIORITY AREAS FOR NEW
SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS
- Fibromyalgia : Diet, nutrition and supplements, electrophysical agents, manual therapies, needling therapies
- Gout: surgery (removal of
tophaceous masses)
- Osteoarthritis: Cox-2 inhibitors in seperate reviews (excluding rofecoxib and etoricoxib, cartilage transplant repair during patellar resurfacing, low level laser therapy, joint distraction
- Soft tissue : splints for De Quervain's tenosynovitis, carpal tunnel syndrome (corticosteroid injection, surgery, splinting)
- Osteoporosis: denosumab (RANK ligand inhibitor), lasofoxifene, odanacatib, vibration therapy
AUTHORS NEEDED!! Help update a
Cochrane review!
Help is currently needed for several important
reviews:
- Deep transverse friction massage for treating tendinitis
- Intensity of exercise for the treatment of osteoarthritis
- Low level laser therapy (clases I, II, III) for treating rheumatoid arthritis
- Therapeutic ultrasound for treating patellofemoral pain syndrome
- Thermotherapy for treatment of osteoarthritis
- Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis in the hand
- Electrical stimulation for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis
- Fluoride for treating postmenopausal osteoarthritis
- Therapeutic
ultrasound
for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis
Please contact us at
cmsg@uottawa.ca if you are interested in
writing or helping on a systematic review for any of the above mentioned
topic areas.
Read
our most recent NEWSLETTER
Our managing editor Lara
Maxwell is on maternity leave until September 2009. Please contact
Elizabeth Ghogomu for any queries at cmsg@uottawa.ca.
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The Cochrane Musculoskeletal
Review Group (CMSG) is a specialized group of health care professionals,
researchers and consumer representatives that belong to the Cochrane
Collaboration, an international organization that aims to help people make-well
informed decisions about health care by preparing, maintaining and promoting
reviews of the effects of health care treatments.
A
collaborative review group, like CMSG, consists of people from
around the world who share an interest in developing and maintaining systematic reviews relevant
to a particular health area. In the case of CMSG,
our scope covers all areas of musculoskeletal conditions, including: gout, lupus erythematosus, osteoarthritis,
osteoporosis, pediatric rheumatology, rheumatoid arthritis, soft tissue
conditions [fibromyalgia, upper limb conditions, lower limb
conditions], spondylo-arthropathy, systemic sclerosis and vasculitis.
The CMSG is also dedicated to
making our systematic reviews available to those interested in treatments for
musculoskeletal diseases (see more about our efforts to
communicate the
evidence ). Currently, the systematic reviews
that the CMSG produces are made available in 3 ways:
1)
Cochrane
Library - search this library for the
complete systematic reviews that are available by subscription or by free
access.
2)
CMSG Abstracts of
Cochrane Reviews
- search for the abstracts of our reviews that are freely available
3) Plain Language
Summaries - summaries of our systematic reviews that are easy to
understand and freely available at the Arthritis Society web site in Canada and Australia
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The years 2000 to 2010 have been officially endorsed by many countries
across the world as the Bone and Joint Decade (BJD) . The
CMSG fully supports the goals of the BJD:
1) to reduce the social and
financial cost of musculoskeletal disorders to society,
2) to improve
prevention, diagnosis and treatment for all patients,
3) to advance
research on prevention and treatment, and
4) to
empower patients to make decisions about their
care.
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The Cochrane Musculoskeletal
Group is grateful for the financial support of the Canadian Institutes of Health
Research (CIHR) and Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health
(CADTH).
 
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