Coloured or Irlen lenses for reading difficulties

Duration:

15 mins

Level:

The first step in the evidence-based practice process is the formulation of an answerable clinical question. This involves identifying terms that can be used in a search for information (evidence) that will help to answer the question. The acronym “PICO” is widely used as a framework to help clinicians identify those search terms. PICO stands for:

P: Patient, Population or Problem. This is a term that identifies the type of patient and/or the condition or problem of interest.

I: Intervention. This term describes the intervention or treatment of interest.

C: Comparison; indicating any state with which the intervention of interest is compared, e.g. a placebo.

O: Outcome; the outcome measure.

The PICO acronym works well for many clinical scenarios in which we are considering intervention or treatment of a condition. However, not all of these terms apply when we are considering scenarios in which we are interested in; diagnosis, prognosis or prevalence, for example.

For the clinical scenario described below, the focus is on treatment so a traditional treatment PICO is used.

You have been referred a 12 year old female who is having trouble reading at school for assessment, diagnosis and management. The child is also seeing a psychologist, speech pathologist and educational tutor regarding her learning. Her mother heard about coloured lenses and overlays in the media and wants to see whether these strategies could be beneficial for her daughter's reading.

Body Tabs

Treatment

The question here is one primarily about treatment and you want to find an evidence-based answer to provide to the child's mother and to inform your intervention.

The suggested PICO question here is: For children with reading difficulties (P) does coloured lenses (I) improve vision and/or reading ability (0).

The PICO has been put into the table below to determine keywords and synonyms that will facilitate the next step - acquiring secondary and primary sources of external evidence.

[The OR and AND operators help specify the search and the asterix (*) is a truncation/ wildcard symbol allowing for any word ending to be found. For example, child* covers child and children. For more information see the resource How to use a PICO to search effectively]

	Keyword		Synonym
P	Child* Reading difficulties	OR	Dyslexia
AND
I	Colour* len*	OR	Color* Irlen overlay
AND
C	none	OR
AND
O	Improved vision OR Improved reading	OR	learning comprehension

To find out more about using this PICO table or to find a worksheet to use for your own questions, click here.

Resource contributed by: Elizabeth Murray, Isabelle Jalbert, Rachel Thompson and Catherine Suttle
Affiliation: EBP Optometry, UNSW
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EBP Process:

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Module 1

on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 13:55 elizabeth.murra...

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