CLOT+

CLOT+

About This Site


CLOT PLUS (Premium LiteratUre Service) is supported by the Canadian Venous Thromboembolism (CanVECTOR) Network and powered by the Health Information Research Unit, McMaster University, building on the McMaster Premium Literature Service, McMasterPLUSTM

CLOT+ is a continuously updated repository of current best evidence from research to support evidence-based clinical decisions.

All articles from over 120 premier clinical journals, including Blood, Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, Thrombosis and Haemostasis, Seminars in Thrombosis and Haemostasis, and Thrombosis Research, are assessed for their methodologic quality by research staff, indexed to content related to thrombosis, then rated for clinical relevance and newsworthiness by at least 3 clinicians practicing in the discipline. Only the strongest studies and systematic reviews are selected for CLOT+; less than 1 in 10 published articles makes the grade.

CLOT+ does not cover basic science, and is providing clinically relevant new evidence to practicing physicians more than a comprehensive literature database for researchers.



What are the features of CLOT+?

The current features of CLOT+ include:

  • selection of articles by expert research staff and front-line clinicians concerning the cause, course, diagnosis, prediction, prevention, and treatment of venous thromboembolism, quality improvement and health economics
  • e-mail alerts about new evidence. Each alert includes McMaster Online Rating of Evidence (MORETM) clinical ratings and comments, and electronic links to the article's abstract via PubMed (if available) and fulltext article via PubMed or the publisher's site (if available for free)
  • a cumulative searchable database of articles that is continuously updated (from mid-2003 forward)
  • a search interface to access relevant information in the accumulating database
  • evidence-based search strategies for MEDLINE to supplement searches in the cumulated PLUS database when needed
  • download options for citation management
  • links to evidence-based resources


What do the clinical ratings in CLOT+ mean?

The current features of PLUS include:

  • systematic review of over 120 journals (including all Cochrane reviews relevant to venous thromboembolism) with selection of articles by expert research staff concerning the cause, course, diagnosis, prediction, prevention, and treatment of venous thromboembolism, quality improvement and health economics, according to explicit criteria, with high reproducibility and periodic quality assurance checks*
  • ratings of each eligible article for clinical relevance and newsworthiness by at least 3 practitioners for each discipline for which the article might be pertinent

* Wilczynski NL, McKibbon KA, Haynes RB. Enhancing retrieval of best evidence for health care from bibliographic databases: calibration of the hand search of the literature. Medinfo. 2001;10(Pt 1):390-3.