ABSTRACT
It is important that you know the principles of evidence-based medicine, which evidence to use and what to do if the ideal evidence is not available.
Evidence-based medicine as a term has been interpreted in a variety of different ways. Many people assume that it means to base clinical practice on the results of published randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Although true in part, this is a very limited definition. Biomedical evidence takes many forms, and these include not only RCTs, but also observational studies (prospective or retrospective cohort studies, case series, case reports, etc.), opinionbased publications and secondary research (systematic reviews of randomized or observational evidence, or metaanalyses of numerical data from more than one trial, often based on the reults of a systematic review). All of these types of evidence may be published or unpublished, and all form part of the ever-accumulating mass of biomedical evidence.
