Designed to make sense of the vast and growing body of scholarly literature in the fields of medicine and biology, our award-winning F1000 services comprise over 4,500 of the world's most distinguished and respected clinicians and researchers who highlight recent key articles and provide their opinion on why these articles are important to the community.
By making browsing and searching our content freely available, we at F1000 are offering you the opportunity to get a flavour of the cutting-edge articles that make a difference to clinicians in their everyday practice and biomedical scientists in their research, saving you invaluable time by highlighting their significance.
Read more or take a free trial. ]]>
An excellent example is this evaluation by Bradley Kropp of the Urology Faculty:
Changes Clinical Practice: "Before an urologist operates on a kidney for decreased function, they need to take time out of their busy clinical practice to confirm their results with the nuclear radiologist. On occasion, redrawing the figures can have a dramatic effect on the numbers and potentially save a child from an unnecessary operation, so this double-check should be undertaken with every patient."Kropp says "It is important to remember that just because a test with a long fancy name … can generate a 'hard' number from a computer, it does not mean that this number is fact. Medical computers and other scientific software are exposed to the same limitation that every medical decision is subject to and that is the 'human element'… It is hard to program in the sense of sight, touch, taste, and smell and these are all important senses that can contribute to making a great medical decision."
He sums up by saying "As a clinical scientist, I have the advantage of performing science in the laboratory and practicing the 'art' of medicine in the clinical setting. A true artist does not paint by the numbers; therefore, a true urologic surgeon should also not operate by numbers."
You can search for articles that change practice by ticking the 'articles that Change Clinical Practice' box in Advanced Search. ]]>
To give you a taste of what the article is about, the improved 'My F1000M Alert' now displays the first line of the article's evaluation [1] or changes clinical practice recommendation [2]. It also lists which sub-specialties the article falls under.
'My F1000M Alerts' can also be tailored to suit your needs. You can specify your favourite specialties so that you are only alerted to articles that matter to you [3], change how often you receive your alerts [4], as well as the number of articles in each alert. You can also access different areas of the website from within the alert.
If you haven't set up an email alert already, why not take a few minutes to do so now?
Allowing Faculty Members to reply to dissents and author responses is yet another great way of enlivening discussion and encouraging debate around key articles within the medical community.
Read our first reply to an author response -- Todd Bull of the Respiratory Disorders Faculty responds to BG Stevinson et al.:
Read our first reply to a dissent -- Michael Strupp responds to a dissent made by Stefan Hegemann, both of the Neurological Disorders Faculty:
Boonen is concerned as "the results appear worrying with regard to diagnostic ability and referral practice in first-line health care." Boonen believes that "rheumatologists should actively contribute to improve the diagnostic ability of general practitioners for rheumatological conditions and develop recommendations or guidelines for referral."
The attention that this article has received from other websites clearly demonstrates its importance to medicine. Ultimately, the diagnostic techniques of general practitioners and the medical resources available to them constantly need to be updated to ensure patients are always receiving the highest quality of medical care.
1. Feldman et al., Arthritis Rheum 2007, 57:1419-1425 [PMID:18050182]
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This is an outstanding evaluation of a clinical trial in which Kropp recommends, "...patients should be given a piece of gum after surgery to help stimulate early return of bowel function. This is simple enough to do; therefore, I will start doing this immediately in my patients undergoing reconstructive surgery."
He continues, "This study highlights how something as simple as gum chewing could improve the medical care that is delivered to our patients. In today's high-tech, molecular-driven scientific world, it is nice to come across an article that can be implemented immediately into our practices without increased healthcare cost."
"Just think how much a pack of gum would cost today if the pharmaceutical industry would have come across this information first."
This evaluation is the essence what we are about; it is a true opinion-piece written with a passion for the topic.
Read the rest of Kropp's outstanding evaluation here. ]]>
When an article has been evaluated by a Faculty Member and published on our website, the authors of the article are notified by email. They then have a chance to comment if they feel that certain aspects of their article have been overlooked and/or respond to any criticisms made.
Take this evaluation by Anastassios Koumbourlis, for example. Koumbourlis felt that Hansen et al. had done an "excellent job" on their article and had provided enough evidence to change clinical practice in the area of spirometry; however, he also thought that they had overemphasised the importance of a particular area. In their response, published underneath Koumbourlis's evaluation, the authors, Hansen, Sun and Wasserman, discuss their reasons for this.
Author response is another great way to enliven discussion and encourage debate around key articles. We currently have a number of author responses waiting to be published in the near future, so keep an eye out for these. ]]>
