title: Simplifying the language of evidence to improve patient care: Strength of recommendation taxonomy (SORT): a patient-centered approach to grading evidence in medical literature.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, East Lansing, MI USA. E-mail: ebell@msu.edu
authors.forename: Mark H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Ebell
authors.forename: Jay
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Siwek
authors.forename: Barry D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Weiss
authors.forename: Steven H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Woolf
authors.forename: Jeffrey L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Susman
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Ewigman
authors.forename: Marjorie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bowman
mesh_terms: 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