MTV, sundhedstjenesteforskning og klinisk praksis

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MTV og evidensbaseret klinisk praksis
2.1 Up-to-date systematic reviews and registers of controlled
trials: prerequisites for scientific and ethical trial design,
monitoring and reporting
Iain Chalmers
The importance of standing on the shoulders of others
In 1997, members of the Danish Research Ethics Committee System
considered what influence existing and newly acquired scientific results
should have on the research ethical evaluation of controlled clinical
trials. They concluded that “it is crucial that all relevant literature
has been reviewed by the research group before submission”,
and that “this will be a precondition when the evaluating committee
is judging the originality of the project and, for example, the permissibility
of using placebo and not an already known treatment in
a control group” (1, 2).
At more or less the same time in the UK, the Medical Research
Council (3) and the Health Technology Assessment Programme put
in place mechanisms for ensuring that information from systematic
reviews of past research, and from registers of ongoing research,
would be available to guide decisions about whether or not to support
new research. What is the background to these decisions in
Denmark and the UK?
Up-to-date systematic reviews of the results of other relevant trials
and registers of controlled trials are essential (albeit not sufficient)
for scientific and ethical trial design, monitoring and reporting.
This is simply a matter of common sense. The most important
challenge facing anyone considering embarking on a new study
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