Critical Appraisal

Questions Answers Explanation

1. Study design, Survey data  Researchers conducted a case-control study at Zhejian

survey or Provincial People’s Hospital which included 81 women
registration? diagnosed with REP as the case group and 81 women
diagnosed with PEP as the control group.
2. Inductive or Deductive Researchers collected all related studies and literatures. Then,
deductive reasoning they designed the materials and methods, collected and
reasoning? analyzed the datas for draw a conclusion.
3 and 4 Nominal Outcome variables:
Type and scales of Ordinal  PEP, REP
each variables in
this study Exposure variables:
 Characteristics and demographics: marital status,
education attainment, smoking history, PID history, parity,
no of prior abortion, contraception experience, mode of
current pregnancy, history of fertility, treatment of primary
EP, history of pelvic surgery
 Clinical characteristics: bleeding, pain, other symptom,
initial HCG, diameter of accessory mass, days of
amenorrhea, pelvic adhesion and peritubal adhesion
5. Type of data, Primary  Data was collected from medical record.
primary, data
secondary or resources
tertiary
resources?
6. Group or Group Data  There were 162 women included in this study. Then, they
ungroup data? were divided into 2 groups, 81 women diagnosed with
REP as the case group and 81 women diagnosed with PEP
as the control group.
7. Ad hoc or Routine  Data was collected from medical record from January 2014
routine data? data to December 2016

8. Measures of Central Means standard deviation were used to describe the variables
Central Tendency with normal distributions; medians and interquartile ranges
Tendency, were used to describe the variables with skewed distributions,
Position and and frequencies and percentage were used to describe the
Dispersion categorical variables.
9. Tables that was Cross  Researchers used the comparative table between ectopic
used to present tabulation pregnancy patients to compare:
results of this  Characteristics and demographics
study  Clinical characteristics and surgical findings
10. Graph used in  No graph used in this paper
this paper

11. Quality of High quality  The materials and methods suited the objective of this
research data study.
 There were various variables consisting of outcome and
exposure variables examined in this study.
 Methods of data collection were carefully done with valid
measurement.
 Comparison between the two groups were clearly defined.
 Statistical analysis was done to get the valid result in order
to achieve the objective of this study.
 There were also multivariate analysis to identify the risk
factors associated with the reccurent ectopic pregnancy
12. Bias High risk of • Because it is a retrospective study  selective bias and
bias information bias from the use of medical records
• Mixture of treatment  bias
13. Sample size  This study included 162 women with ectopic pregnancy
calculation for (primary and recurrent)
this study
14. Sampling  This case-control study didn’t mention clearly about
technique sampling technique.

15 and 16.  Shapiro–Wilk tests were used to assess the normality of the
Statistical analysis sample distributions.
 Significance of the differences between the REP and
control groups was assessed by Chi square test and
Fisher’s exact tests for categorical variables.
 Student’s t-test was used for the analysis of continuous
variables with normal distribution
 Mann–Whitney U-test for analysis of continuous variables
with skewed distributions
 Multivariate logistic regression with stepwise selection
was used to evaluate the influencing factors
17. Error to  In this study, the level of statistical significance was set at
conclude p < 0.05.
statistical
analysis results
18. How was the Good  Researchers clearly explained background, methods and
presentation of results in this study.
results in this  They also gave clear and detail explanation about the
paper? results presented in the table.
 Moreover, they explained the limitation of this study and
gave a solution for another further study.