User:Apetko3/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.) Lumbar puncture

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose to evaluate this article because I was curious to see the section regarding infant lumbar puncture and how detailed it was regarding success rates of the procedure, standard of care, and indications. I am sure patients and especially parents of infants to whom the procedure is recommended will use this article as a starting point to inform themselves.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The lead section is well cited, thought out, comprehensive, and has a good logical flow and provides a good general overview of what the procedure is, as well as mentioning when it was first introduced. The first sentence needs to be edited for parallelism to include treatment as a function of LP in addition to diagnosis, as is mentioned later. The medical uses section is divided into diagnostic and treatment sections which provide a good overview of conditions that can be either diagnosed or treated with this procedure. The list of contraindications is fairly comprehensive, as is documentation of the technique and discussion of possible adverse events. It is a good introductory resource for patients and can also be used as a reference for clinicians.

The content generally reads as current and up to date. The sources I checked were also current, and there seems to be a variety of sources which do have working links. The introduction and most of the article is heavily cited which I would expect given its prominence and frequency of use.

The article seems well organized and well written with a balanced, neutral tone which is not persuasive or unprofessional. I did not find any obvious grammatical or spelling errors. It strikes a good balance for Wikipedia, which is to say professional and technical enough to be useful while not being so technical that it is unreadable for a general audience.

The images used in the article are clear, relevant, appropriately cited, and add to the clarity of the article. There is an image outlining the equipment used, as well as of the procedure itself on a real patient, as well as a schematic to help visualization and a historic photo at the bottom of the article. There are not any superfluous images nor is there anything that is obviously missing, although there are probably contributions of images which would add to the article further, as with any article.

Talk page discussion and level:

This is a level 4, B-class article, and it is part of Wikiproject Medicine, rated as high importance by the neurology task force. The talk page is pretty robust and includes discussion of edits for clarity, flow, citations, technical nuance, and also provides many vivid personal experiences that contributors have had during an LP.

My overall impressions of this article are favorable, which is reassuring given its prominence and likely frequent use. I would have expected it to be fairly refined, which it is. I believe it is well developed, but it would benefit from more granular detail regarding LP outcomes and standard of care in infants, which is something I plan to add in.