On 'Can a comprehensive lymphedema management program decrease limb size and reduce the incidence of infection in a woman with postmastectomy lymphedema?'

We encourage Journal readers to respond to articles in “Evidence in Practice.” E-mail your contribution to the dialogue to steveglaros@apta.org.? We would like to suggest an alternate search strategy for the “Evidence in Practice” article in the March issue written by Charles Ciccone, PT, PhD. Dr Ciccone selected the CINAHL database because he wanted “to focus on journals that might deal specifically with physical therapy interventions.” CINAHL is not restricted to physical therapy interventions. In contrast, the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) (ptwww.cchs.usyd.edu.au/pedro/) is a database that is restricted to systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of physical therapy interventions. We believe, therefore, that it might offer a potentially more efficient method to search for external evidence on the effectiveness of physical therapy interventions than generic databases, such as CINAHL or MEDLINE, could. In our opinion as the developers of PEDro, PEDro is a much more complete database of RCTs and systematic reviews in physical therapy than either MEDLINE or CINAHL are. A search of PEDRO was conducted on March 6, 2002. By typing lymphedema in the abstract search box, 6 records …