How to Use PICO in Clinical Practice

In this video, Dr. Yen-Ying Lee demonstrates the whole process of applying PICO in a case.

This time, our type II diabetic patient, Mr. B, asked that if the new anti-diabetic agent, a SGLT-2 inhibitor, can reduce weight as he saw on the news?

We should recognize PICO first. The patient belongs to type II DM patients, and the intervention is the SGLT2 inhibitor. The comparison will be a placebo, and the outcome will be weight loss. Once we form our PICO, we can start to perform the literature search.

When searching for suitable materials, we can limit the search type to randomized controlled trials, and choose the clinical study categories, then we will get 22 randomized control trials.

After reviewing them, we have to exclude studies that are not fit into the case scenario. Next, consider the patient population and start to evaluate the efficacy.

Finally, we get the summary that the average weight loss is around 2-3kg in 6 months, which is not as much as the news says.

This is the end of this week, if you have any question or thoughts, please leave them below.