Q J Med 2003; 96: 1-5
© 2003 Association of Physicians
Editorial |
Research evidence and the individual patient
Hadassah Medical School, Kaplan Medical Center, Rehovot, Israel e-mail: amiMD@clalit.org.il Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School, Boston
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Clinical decision-making used to be based on physicians' experience and authority. Now this is no longer enough. The dissemination of the practice of evidence-based medicine (EBM) has closely appended science to art.1 Clinicians worldwide have access to powerful, precise and up-to-date information sources on which to base both diagnosis and treatment. Medical textbooks, which until recently, referred to tests as being ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ and to treatments as being ‘useful’ or ‘ineffective’ for a given condition, are being transformed. They are less likely to contain these vague adjectives, whose meanings are uncertain,2 or the tables that cite extremely rare causes on the same footing as highly common ones. An analytical, quantitative and critical approach to medical data is on the rise. Factual, numeric information, often derived from the scientific examination of large numbers of patients, is now widely available, through modern textbooks, journal articles and electronic databases. Many of these
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