Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
This edition sees the second anniversary of the first publication of best evidence topic reports (BETs) from Manchester Royal Infirmary,1 the publication of the first ever “guest” BETs and the launch of the bestbets web site.
The BETs were designed in 1997 as a method for appraising real clinical questions using published evidence.2 The BETs were never meant to be systematic reviews. They are a method of evidence retrieval, evaluation and collation easily achievable by busy emergency physicians. Although originally used to influence practice locally, publication in the JAEM has disseminated the information to a much wider audience. The BETs were based on the critically appraised topics (CATs) developed by Sackett et al.3, 4 CATs usually use one or two high quality papers to answer a specific question; this approach has been adopted in other …