FORMULATING YOUR QUESTION

One of the most important steps in doing a literature search is to analyze your question or topic, and decide which variables need to be included in your search strategy.

The clinical case: The patient is a 64 year old postmenopausal woman who wants your advice about hormone replacement therapy. She is having postmenopausal symptoms, and wonders if she should begin taking conjugated estrogens. She's heard a lot of good and bad things about estrogen replacement therapy -- that estrogen can prevent broken bones, but may increase a patient's risk of breast cancer. This patient has a history of mild heart disease, and especially fears heart diseases because her mother died of a heart attack at age 50. You'd like more information about estrogen replacement therapy before you decide what course of action to take with this patient.

Use the PICO method to identify the key elements or most important pieces of your clinical question:

• P = the patient population or problem
• I = the intervention (therapy, test) being considered
• C = the comparison (if any), and
• O = the desired outcome.

What question would you pose
to address the case that was described above?

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