Step one - formulating a question

There are five main steps that must be followed in order to carry out a systematic review.

Step one

You need to formulate a clear, focused question. In particular, you need to think about the population (the types of people), the type of intervention or exposures and the types of outcomes that are of interest.

Let's think about the population. Adults of either gender who have one or more histologically proven, primary basal cell carcinoma (basal cell carcinmoas are a type of skin cancer). It is important to include 'histologically proven information' here otherwise we may not know for sure if the lesions are basal cell carcinomas or something that looks like basal cell carcinomas.

The intervention would be any treatment for the carcinoma versus the 'gold standard' or other types of treatment. You should think very carefully about the outcomes. There should be one primary outcome which should reflect clinical practice and then a number of secondary outcomes. In general, reviews should include all reported outcomes that are likely to be meaningful to people making a decision about the healthcare problem the review addresses.