Evidence-Based Medicine

EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE
Introduction
t is worth to mention that practicing according to the results of clinical studies
and experiments is not a new concept in clinical practice. Ibn Al-Razi (Rhazes
865-925) described the best clinical practice as: “the practice that has been
agreed up on by practitioners and supported by experiments”. In addition he
was the first scientist to recognize the need for a comparison group in clinical
studies. Ibn sina (Avicenna 981-1037) listed several requirements for studies
evaluating new medications. These principles include the need for the drug to
be tested on a well defined disease, the effect of the drug must be seen to occur
constantly in many cases, and the study must be done on humans, for testing a
drug on a lion or a horse might not prove anything about its effect on humans.
All these principles are still valid in the era of evidence based medicine. In
1992 a group of researchers from McMaster University started to use the term
“Evidence-Based Medicine”. They wrote a series of articles in collaboration
with the Journal of The American Medical Association (JAMA) where they
established the principles of the concept of evidence based medicine.
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is a relatively new approach to the teaching
and practice of medicine. Historically, physicians› clinical decision-making was
based on the knowledge received during their medical training and experiences
gained through individual patient encounters i.e. opinion-based.
Evolution of epidemiology, and subsequently clinical epidemiology, resulted
in methods that allowed the objective critique of therapies used in clinical
practice. Epidemiologic principles were applied to problems encountered
in clinical medicine and an increasing number of clinical trials and medical
journals emerged.
The past two decades have witnessed an acceleration of the information
explosion and with it the volume of medical publications. The importance of
keeping updated is emphasized even more, given that the half life of medical
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