Table 1.

Summary of the criteria used to rate sentences according to clinical usefulness.

Rating	Definition	Examples
1	Not relevant for clinical decision making, such as sentences that introduce the scope of a document or provide navigation to related documents.	“The management of children with heart failure will be presented here.” “Psychosis and treatment of psychotic depression are discussed separately.”
2	Provide background information, such as the epidemiology and physiopathology of a condition, mechanism of action of a drug, and description of the design of a research study.	“A 2012 meta-analysis of 56 studies (20,771 patients) compared one or more antiarrhythmic drugs to control or to each other.” “Heart failure is estimated to affect 12,000 to 35,000 children below the age of 19 years in the United States each year.”
3	Describe potentially useful details about a specific treatment, but at the level of detail that would not be useful for text summaries. Examples include: 1) treatment adverse effects, contraindications, precautions, and monitoring; 2) results or conclusions of clinical trials or meta-analyses; and 3) overall treatment efficacy, but not the specific patients for which the treatment should be used.	“The presence of renal insufficiency warrants dose reduction or cessation of sotalol and dofetilide.” “Antiarrhythmic drugs are associated with a potential for serious adverse side effects, particularly the induction of proarrhythmia.” “In the EMERALD trial, Dofetilide had a somewhat better efficacy than sotalol.”
4	Include a recommendation for or against a specific intervention for a specific patient population.	In patients with inadequate glycemic control on sulfonylureas, with A1C >8.5 percent, we suggest switching to insulin.” “For patients with adrenergically-mediated AF, we suggest beta blockers as first-line therapy, followed by sotalol and amiodarone.”
5	Same as 4, but include an explicit attribution to a source of evidence (e.g., meta-analysis, medical society guideline).	We agree with the 2012 ACCF/AHA/ACP/AATS/PCNA/SCAI/STS guideline for the diagnosis and management of patients with stable ischemic heart disease, which recommends beta blockers as first line therapy to reduce anginal episodes and improve exercise tolerance.”