Evidence-Based Pain Management and Palliative Care in The Cochrane Library.

The Cochrane Library of systematic reviews is published quarterly. Issue 2 for 2003 of the library was published in May 2003. That issue contains 2395 reviews of which 1669 are in full text. The issue contains 79 new reviews, seven of those are directly relevant to pain management and palliative care. Annotated bibliographies for those seven reviews are provided. Issue 3 for 2003, published in July 2003, contains 3058 reviews and protocols of which 1754 are fully published reviews. Issue 3 contains 85 new reviews, five are relevant to practitioners in pain and palliative care. References are published in the same format as the citation for Cochrane reviews. The Cochrane trials database now stands at over 375,000 records with an additional 4100 one-page summaries of non-Cochrane reviews in the NHS database of reviews of effectiveness (DARE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]