InfoGuides: ECHO 425 Seminar in Echocardiography: Systematic research with PICO

Last Updated: Sep 25, 2025 3:01 PM

Critical Think: Plan you search. Use the PICO search guide

You will encounter a variety of medical literature based on the type of the type of evidence based (EBM) research studies conducted to answer a clinical question.
The best type of medical literature to use are the journal articles labeled as systematic reviews and meta analysis due to the rigorous applied analysis of multiple studies.
Start your EBM research with the library's Cochrane reviews database(abstracts) and Pubmed/PMC. If you use Google scholar and other databases add "systematic review" with the keywords

Take a look at Figure 1 Strength of evidence Pyramid

source: Sowdhamini S. Wallace, Gal Barak, Grace Truong, Michelle W. Parker; Hierarchy of Evidence Within the Medical Literature. Hosp Pediatr August 2022; 12 (8): 745–750. https://doi.org/10.1542/hpeds.2022-006690

When selecting keywords , think about the following before searching:

PATIENT/PROBLEM - What are the characteristics of the patient or population or problem that you are researching?
INTERVENTION - What is being done to or for this patient or population or problem?
COMPARISON - What alternatives can be considered?
OUTCOME - What are you trying to measure ?

what type of information are you looking for:?
- therapy (treatment),
- Diagnosis,
- Etiology (identify causes for disease) ,
- Prognosis (estimate patient's clinical course),
- Prevention

You will find a variety of health and medical journal articles based on the type of research being conducted e.g. Random Controlled Trials (RCT) , cohort studies, systematic reviews, meta-analysis, etc.

PICO Examples

P: "US veterans"

i: "ultrasound screening"

C: compared to??

O: expected measurements

P: "Female athletes"

I " echocardiography"

C compared to??

O: expected measurements output