ABSTRACT
The daily practice of medicine always lags behind scientific knowledge, since physicians have difficulty in accessing useful information. Diagnostic or therapeutic procedures of proven efficacy are disseminated as slowly as other ineffective techniques are abandoned. In our field, we all remember the long 20 years that passed from the first report of the efficacy of antenatal administration of corticoids in the reduction of neonatal mortality in preterm newborns, to their routine use. This example emphasizes the enormous distance between investigation and clinical practice.
