Effective Therapies
In considering the evidence for effective treatment, a subgroup of the team (Bendeck, Chen, and McLeod) undertook a data search to establish the evidence base for treatment of the common conditions. They carried out comprehensive searches of the MEDLINE (1966-April 2003) and EMBASE (1980-April 2003) databases to identify therapeutic studies on scabies, pyodermas, and superficial mycoses (but note that many of the studies were performed in industrial countries). They used foreign-language articles if an English abstract was provided. Table 37.1 shows search terms for each of the skin diseases common in the developing world and for treatment.
[Table .]
The team members reviewed study titles and abstracts to select relevant articles and scrutinized the bibliographies of selected articles to identify pertinent studies not captured in the initial literature search. They defined admissible evidence as primary therapeutic studies, based on clinical evaluation, of the treatment of each disease.
