Abstract

This issue of the Southern Medical Journal is devoted to a topic of great importance to patient care and to the evaluation of medical and scientific data published in medical journals—“Evidence-based medicine” (EBM). Originally envisioned by Archibald Cochrane more than 40 years ago as a response to the lack of unreliable scientific evidence to guide physicians in their clinical judgments, the concept of EBM has evolved into a systematic identification of the predictive strength of interventional clinical trials. Its importance to the clinician is to be found in its uniformity of categorizing clinical research studies, based on their statistical structure and confidence, which, when taken in combination with professional clinical judgment, can give rise to informed therapeutic recommendations for a patient’s care. EBM is not a stand-alone method of clinical decision-making, for the clinician must take into account his/her experience, training, level of expertise, the special circumstances of the health and wishes of each patient, and the longitudinal assessment of the patient’s progress under the therapeutic care to which the patient has agreed.