“I myself know nothing, except just a little, enough to extract an argument from another who is wise and to receive it fairly”. Socrates (399–469 BC)

In this the second part of SOCRATES (synopsis of Cochrane reviews applicable to emergency services) the working party present the results of their search of the Cochrane Database of systematic reviews in the area of neurology. As previously noted, in the first article of this series, the work was undertaken to inform ourselves and our colleagues in emergency medicine about the reviews in the “Cochrane Database of systematic reviews” that are of relevance to emergency physicians. At the time this review was performed the 52 Collaborative review groups had produced 1750 articles of which we found 61 that were particularly relevant. This paper, as with SOCRATES, is aimed at disseminating a structured synopsis of the output of the Cochrane Database of systematic reviews of particular relevance to practising emergency physicians.

Methodology

The members of the 10 strong SOCRATES team were assigned Cochrane groups whose articles were of particular interest to them. Each reviewer then selected the articles from each of the Cochrane groups that they felt were relevant to emergency medicine. The reviewer then summarised the article using a format that had previously been agreed by the team. Each review was presented to the group. The full text of the article was then …