BACKGROUND: Evidence-based medicine (EBM) plays an important and dominant role in promoting effective decision-making in the health system. This study was aimed to evaluate the EBM performance among health-care workers (HCWs) in hospitals in Iran. METHODS: In this study (a cross-sectional study), participants were 2800 HCWs in hospitals. A researcher-made questionnaire was designed, and judgments of 10 experts were used for the improvement of content validity. The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by the test-retest method (α = 0.85). Data were analyzed using the descriptive statistics, t -test, and one-way ANOVA, in SPSS.16 software. RESULTS: Eventually, 1524 questionnaires were completed (response rate: 54.4%). The results of the study show that 62%of participants have not accessed scientific journals, 52% of them have difficulties using the Internet at work, guidelines were not reachable for 76% of them, and about 80% have not access to databases. About 39% of participants were not well informed about databases of EBM, and 15.8% of them were immensely knowledgeable about EBM terminology. The most important problems to increase HCWs information about EBM include research methodology- related problems, lack of resources and motivation, and coordination problems. The most prominent facilitators include: providing training courses in EBM and increased facilities. Only work experience showed a significant correlation with barriers and facilitators, and gender revealed a significant correlation with barriers ( P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: It seems that prioritizing the increased access to information resources and databases, considering the research skills of the HCWs, extending the opportunities and increasing the facilities such as workforce, equipment, physical environment, and accessibility can have a great impact on the improvement of the activities associated with EBM.

Background: Highly necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of preventive interventions to prioritize them at the community level. We aimed to systematically investigate the related studies on the effects of fluoride varnish and fissure sealant on dental caries in 6-12 children. Methods: We searched PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Scopus databases using Fluoride Varnish, Fissure Sealant, Caries, and Oral Health keywords. The timeframe selected to search for articles is from 2000 to Dec 2020. CMA software: 2 (Comprehensive Meta-Analysis) was used to perform the meta-analysis. The intervention groups in this study were fluoride varnish and fissure sealants, each of them compared to the control groups. Results: We included nine studies. In the intervention group 84,380 and control group 11,254 individuals were studied. Eight of the studies were Randomized Clinical Trial (RCT) and Field RCT, and two was non-RCT. In the overall Fluoride Varnish efficacy study, 4 were fully effective, 1 was ineffective, and all 4 were completely effective for Fissure Sealant. There was a significant difference between decayed, missing, and filled permanent teeth (DMFT) and decayed, missing, and filled primary teeth (dmft) indices in both interventions and comparison groups. Moreover, the mean difference of DMFT for Fluoride Varnish and Fissure Sealant in the intervention and control groups were -0.55 and -0.29, respectively (P=0.00). Conclusion: Due to the efficacy of fissure sealant and fluoride varnish in preventing dental caries in children aged 6-12 yr, these interventions can be considered as health priorities of societies and health systems interventions in countries.

Purpose:The aim of the present study is to bring to the surface the attitudes of locals and health service providers who live around Lake Urmia about its drying and consequence effects on people's health. Methods:In this qualitative study with the grounded theory approach, the participants included 30 locals, 30 social workers, and 10 family doctors who were recruited by target-based sampling method from the villages of three east-costs cities of Lake Urmia.Results: Data were collected by holding 7 group discussion sessions and were analyzed using a contentanalysis methodology. Main themes and 15 sub-themes were extracted including indirect affecting factors on health (reduced revenues, changed agricultural patterns, migration, and unemployment) disease prevalence (respiratory diseases, cancers, anemia, psychological disorders, and others) confusing factors (screening patients and active respiratory recording, people's oversensitivity, and industrial and producing centers) and need for more evidence (need for strong evidence, need for data recording system, and need for providing scientific content). Conclusion:Based on participants' attitudes LUD is indirectly effective on people's health by reducing revenue, and changing agricultural patterns. About direct effects, still, it cannot be acclaimed that increase in the prevalence of diseases is related to LUD while many confusing factors are influential and further studies are needed.

Systematic reviews aim to provide comprehensive and structured synthesis of existing knowledge in specific subjects; therefore its importance is well recognized. Because the strategy of performing the literature search, study selection, and synthesis of the results to report the findings follow defined principles [1, 2]. However, suboptimal or sometimes arbitrary reporting structure and disregarding the existent reporting guidelines (such as CONSORT for randomized trials) is one of the main challenges regarding the performing this kind of studies [3][4][5].According to experiences gained from some systematic review studies in the field of dental caries prevention that were not subject to a meta-analysis [6-8], there were some weaknesses in conducting clinical studies making them inappropriate for inclusion in a meta-analysis design (e.g. not providing complete reports regarding the baseline status of dental health, not comprehensively evaluating the related indicators, etc.).Most of the studies on the effectiveness of Fissure sealants and Fluoride therapies are performed with the aim to examine prevention rate and decay levels, respectively. And some of the studies examine the effect of both interventions, reporting dental caries indicators (DMFT, DMFS, dmft and dmfs). Some important findings of these studies indicate lack of assigning control and intervention groups in examining periodic outcomes