A systematic review of physical and rehabilitation medicine topics as developed by the Cochrane Collaboration

The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the Cochrane Collaboration, its development over the years, and its usefulness for physical and rehabilitation medicine specialists. After introducing the Cochrane Collaboration, we systematically analyzed all titles of the reviews in each of the 50 review groups. For ''Rehabilitation,'' we included not only exercise and physical therapy, but also all of the educational and pharmacological interventions aimed at supporting rehabilitation. The search was performed using Issue 2, 2007 of the Cochrane Library. We retrieved 138 completed reviews that dealt with rehabilitation interventions performed by 20 review groups. No umbrella reviews could be found at present. The most prolific groups in the rehabilitation field were: musculoskeletal (28 reviews), stroke (20), back (18), and the movement disorder group (13). The most discussed intervention was exercise (37 reviews), dealing with physical medicine (20) and pharmacological intervention (11). Six other reviews dealt with multidisciplinary rehabilitation. Low back pain treatment and stroke were the most investigated topics. The Cochrane Collaboration serves today as a main step in increasing an evidence-based approach to medicine and rehabilitation. Europa Medicophysica is continuously increasing its importance and presence in the world of physical and rehabilitation medicine, and part of its mission is to increase and strengthen an evidence-based approach to this field. We will continue to look at the contents of the Cochrane database and regularly report on its updates concerning topics of interest for physical and rehabilitation medicine.