Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't
BMJ 1996; 312 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.312.7023.71 (Published 13 January 1996) Cite this as: BMJ 1996;312:71
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The rapid response of Abt H Mat Sain importantly reminds us of the
dual pillars which David Sackett described as the foundation of Evidence
Based Medicine. While there may be some argument about what constitutes
the best external evidence, approaching this is infinitely easier than
clearly defining the second pillar on which the concept of Evidence Based
Medicine rests; what David Sackett called "individual clinical expertise".
He describes this as reflecting the proficiency and judgment that
physicians acquire through clinical practice.
There is a qualitative aspect to these attributes, but we have not
articulated criteria that might help us to decide who is to be relied
upon to provide the soundest expert clinical judgement. Because of this
(and some other factors), Evidence Based Medicine is in danger of becoming
the very thing it sought to avoid. That is to escape from recommendations
based on authority.
Today, all too often, those whose opinions are sought are experts by
virtue of their elevation to this rank by the marketing departments of
drug manufacturers. These might be the "key opinion leaders" or KOLs whose
expert opinions cannot be regraded as free from influence by evident
conflicts of interest. Promotional material from educational entities
funded by industry, often tell us that their recommendations are evidence
based. But it is not beyond conjecture that an expert has been created
expressly to justify such a claim.
We may have no way to assess the proficiency of the expert whose
opinion is sought. An association with an academic institution is really
not enough and a long list of publications may also be irrelevant, but the
number of years in clinical practice might be helpful. As long as what
constitutes individual clinical expertise remains unquestioned and poorly
defined, clinical recommendations may indeed be made by the kind of
authority that Evidence Based Medicine sought to avoid.
Experts on various clinical guidelines committees in the US declare
conflicts of interest, usually related to receiving payments from drug
manufacturers. They provide the clinical expertise, that together with a
consideration of external evidence justifies the claim that the
recommendations they help to formulate are evidence based. We are far from
assured that these individuals necessarily have the requisite clinical
experience to provide the clinical judgment that David Sackett stated was
necessary to be intergrated with the best external evidence.
In this way, there is a danger that the current application of
Evidence Based Medicine may succeed in creating the very condtion it was
meant to avoid.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
An evidence-based medicine that prizes meta-analyses and randomised-
controlled trials can help establish the most appropriate treatment for
large populations with the same clearly defined clinical condition.
However, such treatments will inevitably fail some patients whilst
inferior comparator groups will not completely lack success.
Individuals are not populations. Symptoms might not be singularly
ascribed to clearly-defined clinical conditions. Many aspects of the
doctor-patient relationship have powerful therapeutic impacts in their own
right. The treatment with the best evidence-base is useless for a
particular patient if it fails them and, in the management of acute
symptoms, must be replaced by plan B or beyond. Such ideas typically
confound contemporary EBM. Some medical disciplines require an EBM that
understands the uniqueness of each situation; accommodates a bit more
diagnostic uncertainty; exploits the importance of the doctor-patient
relationship; and suggests other options when the “best” choice fails.
This potentially legitimises academic conjecture and therapeutic
empiricism. It even keeps the door open to such things as case histories.
Whilst contemporary EBM is vitally important, so is much of the material
that it deliberately excludes. This might help explain the diversity of
publication types found in most thriving medical journals.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Are not the criteria here rather selective?
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Evidence-based Medicine: Why in Genuinely Protestant Countries?
In a fundamental contribution on how to practise and teach Evidence-
based Medicine (EbM) Sackett and his co-authors trace EbM back to mid-
nineteenth century France. Is that view valid? Is medical theory as
established by Bichat (1771-1802), Magendie (1783-1855), and Louis (1787-
1872) really the major root of EbM? Do the three represent a homogeneous
school of medical thinking? And why has France never since been a center
of EbM?
These questions call for an archeological search. The mere reference
to medical thinking in Paris cannot explain the rise of EbM in late
twentieth century in the face of a gap of more than 150 years.
Additionally, it has to be stated that Bichat and Magendie as the founders
of modern histology and experimental physiology respectively stand in
another epistemiological tradition than the founder of the “numerical
method”, Louis. Granted that the call for external evidence is a necessary
condition for EbM, this, however, cannot be held as a sufficient property
to differentiate it from conventional medicine. Relying on external
evidence provided by pathology and even epidemiology is also essential to
conventional medicine. Thus, it is not so much the quest for external
evidence, but rather the ways of both detecting respectively creating and
handling evidence that genuinely characterises EbM. So if we look at the
countries and the universities that cherished EbM right from the beginning
in the early 90s of the last century, it is mainly North America, the UK,
Scandinavia and the Netherlands. Thereupon it seems more than likely that
EbM, albeit also minted by empiricist thinking, can be figured as an
offspring of Protestant exegesis practised in the aforementioned
countries.
EbM could only thrive in Protestant countries as it obviously applies
principles of “scientific” exegesis to the growing body of medical
“tradition”. As Catholicism could base decisions on conflicting traditions
on a dogma-based principle of the “Pre” of the eminence, Protestant
theology lacking a single authority to settle theologic disputes had to
develop other solutions to come to terms with contradicting passages from
the scriptures and to clarify the relationship of the scriptures to other
sources of tradition such as the Fathers of the Church. Dogma or mere
negligence of whole parts of the Bible could not convince the believers
any more. Thus, scientific ways of reading the scriptures had to be
developed. Modern text criticism, literary criticism, for instance,
emerged, and methods evolved how to weigh different sources of tradition.
Researchers developed elaborate tools to dissect texts in order to come to
terms with contradictions. Yet, in order to avoid the danger of being
entangled in a mingle of loose ends of deconstructed texts, some kind of
hierarchy had to be reintroduced, some kind of principle that could guide
exegesis. The search for the canon in the canon began as a hermeneutical
exegetical challenge. Thus, even within the Scriptures texts were sorted
out into different levels of “importance” in a kind of similar way as
“tradition” of medical research is assorted to grades of evidence.
This, however, does not suffice as an explanation for the rise of EbM
in certain countries since Germany as one of the centers of Protestant
exegesis hasn’t intensively been promoting EbM. As a second condition sine
qua non serves a democratically shaped relationship among physicians since
the new methodology does not rely on the “Pre” of hierarchical eminence
and age per se, but dwells on the honest and transparent search for the
actual and best “substantiated” knowledge. This again is a Protestant
notion: Every lay person is entitled to read the Bible as any cleric is.
Thus, we are convinced that EbM is deeply indebted to or even
embedded in the grounds of historical critical exegesis arising from the
Protestant way of reading the Bible:
1. Everybody has got access to the „text“ without the preconditions of a
certain position.
2. Inconsistencies are neither smoothed out by dogma nor by negligence nor
by dictum of a final authority, but
3. review and appraisal follow criteria that are never absolutely set.
These criteria are constantly struggled for in a hermeneutical process
such as the refinement of EbM- grades.
In conclusion, the merits of EbM are not so much that it favors just
one form of methodology as the gold standard such as randomised control
trials, but its eminently new and challenging property is its kind of
“reformatory” way of reading the tradition according to principles that
everybody could intellectually follow. EbM both in its historical setting
of late twentieth century and in its self-conception as a method of
dealing with tradition is rooted in Protestant exegesis. Thus, it
represents a hermeneutical turn in medicine. Furthermore, both the
prerequisites and the consequences of EbM are in so far identical as a
democratically shaped interphysician relationship is supportive to EbM
and at the sime time evolves out of EbM.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Sir
The unprecendented capability of the open-access online publication
such as this in the British Medical Journal heralds a new interactive
forms of fora and publications not experienced before the introduction of
the Internet technology. The almost unlimited storage capacity of the
cyberspace in handling huge amount of data, textual and images make rooms
and spaces in the library rather redundant. Old articles published years
ago can be retrieved anytime anywhere as need arises. Issues that are
relevant now as they were before could be appraised and re-appraised
expeditiously without limits. Articles written years ago could be
retrieved and interactive feedbacks given anew based on fresh new ideas
and insights.
Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) is one such issue. The apparent
moratorial paper published by the authors in 1996 seems relevant now as it
was in the past (1). The long list of associated papers and books on the
same homepage indicates the magnitude of importance given to the issue of
Evidence-Based Medicine by many researchers, writers and practitioners
alike. However, despite the enormous numbers of written books and articles
on EBM, much debates, misunderstanding and confusions still abound. The
degree of positive or negative passionate association with and pleas for
EBM varies between different authors. Much confusions and
misunderstandings arise from the extremely passionate argument to imbibe
EBM in clinical appraisal and practice.
The other major flaw in the exhortation of subscribing to EBM is the
overemphasis of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) as the panaceal
standard bearer of evidence within EBM argument. This line of debate seems
to overlook the dual components of EBM as vividly described by the authors
of this article, namely the internal evidence and the external evidence
(1). The explicit codified data of any RCT or even the meta-analyses of
the RCTs hailed as the Holy-Grail of therapeutic clinical evidence by the
extreme protagonists only addresses the external evidence within the whole
concept/philosophy of EBM.
The internal clinical evidence is depicted by the individual
clinician expertise and experience. This concept of clinician’s expertise
and experience contributing to the EBM is a very important conceptual
admission on the background of enormous amount of clinical information at
the clinician’s disposal to use. Furthermore, this idea would relate EBM
to the whole realm of clinical training and education. With the rapid
growth of scientific knowledge and the avid application of technology in
current clinical practice, advanced and ongoing clinical training and
education need serious attention to ensure that practicing clinicians are
fully equipped with the current internal clinical evidence.
It seems that the development of internal clinical evidence is a much
more intensive undertakings from the perspectives of both capital and
labour. This evidence is developed and based on the dynamism and
plasticity of human intellect. The tacit information and knowledge
acquired by clinicians through years of training and apprenticeship is
hence given due credence in the whole context EBM. The ultimate utility of
the codified external clinical evidence only depends on the appropriate
appraisal by the internal clinical evidence.
It is hoped that clinicians will not anymore be skewedly exhorted to
only use level I evidence from the scale of external evidence to base
their responsible clinical decisions (2). The title of this article is an
example of the wayward direction of the debates on EBM(2). The whole
discussion about evidence is for its appropriate utility in the practice
of Medicine rather than applied to the wider enterprise of exploration and
experimentation of science.
It is also hoped that expert technical surgeons will not be
inappropriately overtly ridiculed by the passionate proponents of external
evidence of EBM for their active exploration of the therapeutic horizon in
using new technology to effect state-of-the-art interventional therapy
especially on uncommon diseases(3).
References
1. David L Sackett, William M C Rosenberg, J A Muir Gray, R Brian
Haynes, and W Scott Richardson
Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't
BMJ, Jan 1996; 312: 71 - 72.
2. J. Arya, H. Wolford, and A. H. Harken
Evidence-Based Science: A Worthwhile Mode of Surgical Inquiry
Arch Surg, November 1, 2002; 137(11): 1301 - 1303.
3. Horton R. Surgical research or comic opera: questions, but few
answers. Lancet 1996;347:984-5.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
In a previous e-response [1], Peter Morrell “ask(s) Joseph Watine to
provide the evidence and the observations for the existence of EBM and
colo-rectal cancer”.
May I suggest Peter Morrell that he would better ask one of the
thousands of patients who are currently suffering from colo-rectal cancer
if they prefer to be treated using current medical knowledge (i.e. EBM) or
if they prefer to be treated by homeopathy or by any other religious
belief? When he has got the answer to this question, Peter Morrell might
perhaps compare the survival of the patients who were treated using the
EBM approach with that of the patients who were treated using the
homeopathic or religious approach.
This might provide us with a very interesting and useful study.
[1]
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters?lookup=by_date&days=1#312/7023/71/EL2
Competing interests: No competing interests
Sir,
In a previous email [1] I am rightly accused by Joseph Watine of
calling EBM little more than a religious belief. This viewpoint can be
approached from two directions in order to show that it might be valid. As
everybody knows, anything that cannot be seen, felt, touched or detected
in some way can only be assumed to exist. Science quite strictly demands
that only those things that can be proven or demonstrated, are permitted
to enjoy the status of being real. Those conceptual or abstract things we
regularly assume to exist fall subject to similar requirements, and if
they fail this test then they are not considered to be real, but merely
convenient assumptions or beliefs.
In religion, such things as God and soul are certainly beliefs of
this type, because they cannot be unequivocally demonstrated. Religions,
therefore, might be distinguished from science in not enforcing this
requirement that the claims of beliefs must be demonstrable. The ‘truths’
of religions, like the arts and humanities, tend to be evaluated in our
life experience rather than through the material proof of hard science.
Such beliefs tend to be measured according to how happy they make you feel
rather than whether they can be proved.
In certain forms of medicine, we find conceptual entities that are
believed to exist. Thus, the vital force and potency energy in homeopathy,
the Qi and meridians in acupuncture, the toxins in nature cure and the
subluxations or joint misalignments in osteopathy - these are all
conventionally thought to fall into the same category of pure beliefs.
However, in every case there exists a body of evidence, within each
specialty, that confirms the conceptual entity, underpins it and validates
a continued belief in it. Otherwise, clearly, such beliefs would have died
out long ago. While this does not actually conclusively prove the
existence of such entities, as science demands, it is sufficient to
maintain an ongoing practical acceptance that such entities are there -
they can be accepted as ‘working hypotheses’ and valid models.
Even in science itself similar concepts abound - things like light-
year, electron, force field, proton, quark, etc dwell in a similar
borderland of being assumed to exist but not being solidly proven. At the
practical level, they can be mathematically or inferentially demonstrated
but as no-one can see or touch them, they can never be completely proven
as real. Science is not composed solely of ‘facts’ but also contains a
surprising range of such unproven conceptual entities that add to the
smooth conceptual fabric of the discipline. Whether that fact in any way
influences the philosophical certainty of science is an open question. As
with vital force and toxins [etc], there is a mass of evidence within
science to sustain a continued belief in these concepts, but beliefs they
certainly are. Thus, when we come to look at EBM, we must demand of it
some definitions and observations that support the provisional conceptual
‘reality’ that people choose to invest in it. If such evidence cannot be
adduced, clearly and for all to see, then we are correct to conclude that
it is no more real than the fairies. I contend that there is no such
evidence and thus EBM is just a transient fashion in medicine, an
invention and a conception idly plucked from the air, which some people
have latched onto as a new saviour in medicine.
The second approach involves tracking those 'conceptual errors' that
collectively lead one to suppose that EBM is a real entity. These
'conceptual errors' are those through which modern medicine views the
organism: what we might call ‘conceptual spectacles’ through which it
habitually and unwittingly views the functioning of the organism, and with
which it explains life phenomena and how it arrives at 'medical truth'. If
it can be demonstrated that these ‘conceptual spectacles’ only lead to a
certain viewpoint, which, upon closer inspection, does not accord with the
actual functioning of the human organism, then clearly one is then
entitled to conclude that it is only a partial picture, rather than the
full truth. Scientific hypotheses cannot stand supreme over observations;
those that conflict with data must be amended or abandoned - in science,
the real world is king.
Having chosen to follow a certain track since the 1850s, the
conceptual fabric of modern medicine inevitably faces a future crisis. Any
sober analysis of its approach to the organism most certainly does reveal
that it possesses conceptual spectacles and only views organism
functioning through them. If it were willing to change those spectacles,
then of course it could obtain very different views of the organism and
hence very different ideas of what medicine is about. It is precisely in
an arena of mature well-reasoned debate, tolerant respect and
philosophical inquiry, that the various claims and evidences of the
different healing modalities, should be brought and evaluated patiently,
neutrally and without prejudice. If such a task is ever undertaken then it
will be possible to show that no single medical approach can claim
superiority over any other. All have some claims on 'medical truth' and
all can be shown to have some clinical validity and some understanding of
how the organism functions. However, seemingly such a time is not yet upon
us and we ‘see but through a glass darkly’.
In fact, the same 'conceptual errors' that lead one to a belief in
EBM, also lead to a belief in colo-rectal cancer as a real entity. I
therefore ask Joseph Watine to provide the evidence and the observations
for the existence of EBM and colo-rectal cancer. If he can provide this
evidence then we can accept that these things are real. If he cannot, then
it will be clear that they are merely beliefs or conceptual fabrications
visible only when viewed through certain conceptual spectacles.
Avoiding any rash, simplistic or literal interpretation, he should
carefully consider the fundamental conceptual error contained in the
following statement: “we need to find proper cross sectional studies of
patients clinically suspected of harbouring the relevant disorder.” [2].
This phrase reveals the source of 'conceptual errors'. Implicitly, I shall
be assuming that this article by Sackett et al is a genuine, lucid and
definitive attempt to summarise what EBM is.
Sources
[1] BMJ letter, Joseph Watine, 2 December 2000, Is EBM a belief?
[2] Sackett DL, Rosenberg WMC, Gray JAM, et al. Evidence based
medicine: what it is and what it isn't. BMJ 1996; 312: 71-72
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/312/7023/71
Competing interests: No competing interests
Editor - Evidence-based medicine has emerged as a powerful problem-
oriented approach to the practice of medicine that seeks to improve
patient care by considering the quality of clinical evidence. Evidence
based medicine is founded upon an ideal that decisions about the care of
individual patients should involve the "conscientious, explicit and
judicious use of current best evidence." (1)
From an ethical perspective, the strongest arguments in support of
evidence based medicine are that it allows the best evaluated methods of
health care, useless or harmful methods to be identified and enables
patients and doctors to make best decisions. Medical decision making draws
upon a broad spectrum of knowledge including scientific evidence,
individual scientific medical education, personal experience, personal
biases and values, economic and political considerations, and
philosophical and social principles ; it may be not always clear how
practitioners integrate these factors into a final decision, but it seems
unlikely that medicine can ever be free of personal and intuitive
judgments. For this reasons evidence based medicine recently has undergone
to a cross fire of criticisms, where it is sometimes depicted as a method
to improve more statystical analysis of pathologic cases, than clinical
decision making to get the best treatment for a single patient.
While clinicians are exhorted to use up to date research evidence to give
patients the best possible care, actually doing so in individual patients
is difficult: at the heart of clinical medicine it is an unresolved
conflict between the essentially case based nature of clinical practice
and the mainly population based nature of the research evidence, and this
is particularly truthful for phytotherapy. In phytotherapy besides usual
problematics of medical research are added the specific issues of the
vegetal extract: its qualitative and quantitative variability, different
types of extraction, phenotipic and genotipic variabilities of vegetal
drugs, different methods of growth, time of harvesting and preservation,
gographical and climatic differences (2).
We believe that in the field of phytotherapy research, evidence based
medicine is not only an unvaluable tool , but the sine qua non to verify
efficacy , tollerability and safety of a herb extract.
Metanalysis on Hypericum perforatum (St. John's Wort) (3) , a drug used
for depression by millions of patients in all over the world, and for a
long time considered just a placebo, recently thanks to important
metanalysis it is now considered a valuable tool for the treatment of mild
and medium depression. In the same way metanalysis on Allium sativum
(Garlic) 4); Serenoa Repens (Saw palmetto) (5) and Menthae piperitae oleum
(Peppermint oil) (6) confirmed the pharmacological activities of these
herbal extracts.
Besides, evidence based phytotherapy is an unique tool to evaluate herbal
drugs in a field where tradition and popular empirism is still very
strong. The development of research on the basis of evidence medicine is
an important international priority in response to the public's growing
use of complementary therapeutic interventions and recent emergence of
drug interactions; and it has to be conducted following parameters
characteristic and proper of phytotherapy.
Bibliography
1. Sackett DL, Rosenberg WMC, Gray JAM, et al.: Evidence based
medicine: what it is and what it isn't. BMJ 1996; 312: 71-72.
2. Firenzuoli F, Gori L.: Evidence-based phytotherapy .Recenti Prog
Med, Nov 1999, 90(11) 628.
3. Stevinson C; Ernst E .:Hypericum for depression. An update of the
clinical evidence.
Eur Neuropsychopharmacol 1999 Dec;9(6):501-5 .
4. Neil HA; Silagy CA; Lancaster T ;et al.: Garlic powder in the
treatment of moderate hyperlipidaemia: a controlled trial and meta-
analysis.J R Coll Physicians Lond 1996 Jul-Aug;30(4):329-34.
5. Boyle P; Robertson C; Lowe F ,et al.:Meta-analysis of clinical
trials of Permixon in the treatment of symptomatic benign prostatic
hyperplasia. Urology 2000 Apr;55(4):533-5393.
6.Pittler MH; Ernst E .Peppermint oil for irritable bowel syndrome: a
critical review and meta-analysis. Am J Gastroenterol 1998 Jul;93(7):1131-
5.
Firenzuoli F, Gori L.
Service of Phytotherapy - St. Joseph Hospital,
Via Paladini 15 - 50053 Empoli (Florence) - ITALY
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re:Evidence-based Medicine: Why in Genuinely Protestant Countries?
A strange and quite unfounded view. Can the authors explain then, why
empiricism and positivism have such strong roots in Austria, which is a
traditionally Catholic country?
Competing interests: No competing interests