Simplifying the language of evidence to improve patient care: Strength of recommendation taxonomy (SORT): a patient-centered approach to grading evidence in medical literature.
Several taxonomies exist for rating individual studies and the strength of recommendations, making the analysis of evidence confusing for practitioners. A new grading scale-the Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy (SORT)-will be used by several family medicine and primary care journals (required or optional), allowing readers to learn 1 consistently applied taxonomy of evidence. SORT is built around the information mastery framework, which emphasizes the use of patient-oriented outcomes that measure changes in morbidity or mortality. Levels of evidence from 1 to 3 for individual studies also are defined. An A-level recommendation is based on consistent and good-quality patient-oriented evidence; a B-level recommendation is based on inconsistent or limited-quality patient-oriented evidence; and a C-level recommendation is based on consensus, usual practice, opinion, disease-oriented evidence, or case series for studies of diagnosis, treatment, prevention, or screening.
Ebell
Mark H
MH
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, East Lansing, MI USA. E-mail: ebell@msu.edu
Siwek
Jay
J
Weiss
Barry D
BD
Woolf
Steven H
SH
Susman
Jeffrey L
JL
Ewigman
Bernard
B
Bowman
Marjorie
M
D000465:Algorithms; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine / Q000145:classification* / Q000592:standards; D005194:Family Practice; D006801:Humans; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic / Q000592:standards; D012196:Review Literature as Topic