[Cochrane Anaesthesia Review Group and the Cochrane Library. Useful resources for anaesthetists].

The Cochrane Collaboration is an international non-profit organisation that aims to help clinicians in making well-informed decisions about health care issues. This is done through preparing, maintaining and disseminating systematic reviews on the effects of health care interventions. To facilitate this task, review groups have been established. These groups cover specific health care areas and form the organisational basis of the collaboration. They provide methodological and logistic help to the authors of the systematic reviews. The Cochrane Anaesthesia Review Group (CARG) covers anaesthesia, perioperative medicine, intensive care,pre-hospital medicine, resuscitation, and emergency medicine. Protocols and completed Cochrane reviews are published in a structured format in the electronic Cochrane Library. Beside this Cochrane database of systematic reviews, the Cochrane library contains a database with summaries of non-Cochrane systematic reviews (database of abstracts of reviews of effectiveness), and a comprehensive database with controlled clinical trials (Cochrane central register of controlled trials). Thus the Cochrane library is a useful source of information on health care interventions for anaesthetists.