A fact box is a simplified display format that presents evidence based data about the benefits and harms of medical treatments, screenings or interventions.
Fact boxes do not use statistics that might be misleading to the reader,[4] such as relative risks, mismatched framing[5] and five-year survival rates for screening.
[1] First, a summary statement describes the benefits and harms of a medical treatment without giving an explicit recommendation about which option is optimal for the reader.
To promote a good understanding of the results, an effect measure for each group should be provided in terms of frequencies, i.e. absolute numbers out of a given sample size of, e.g., 100 or 1000 cases.
[14] Fact boxes are disseminated on a number of health topics such as vaccinations, surgical procedures, nutritional supplements, cancer screening tests[3] and to reduce decisional conflict about antibiotics for pneumonia and artificial hydration in advanced dementia.