Results of a recent review show a significant reduction in mortality with ICD. The effect, however, was weakened by the inclusion of the largest recent trial. Carl Heneghan, Editor in Chief One essential element of determining if a trial is sufficiently robust enough to believe the results is that the control group received standard […]
Centrally acting medicines increase the chance of losing at least 5% of body weight, but their use increases the risks of serious of harms Igho Onakpoya Are the benefits and harms of currently available centrally-acting weight loss drugs (medicines that act on the brain) different from those withdrawn from the market at the time of […]
In BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, Iain Chalmers and colleagues set out the Key concepts for Informed Health Choices. Carl Heneghan Shared Decision Making, according to NHS England, means patients can review all the treatment options available to them and participate actively with their healthcare professional in making that decision. The National Institute for Health and […]
‘blindly pursuing early detection risks subjecting a third of diagnosed women to unnecessary harm.’ Jason Oke According to research led by the Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University London, screening all British women over 30 years of age could result in 17,000 fewer ovarian and 64,000 breast cancers over a lifetime. Not only […]
A manifesto for Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) was published in the BMJ earlier this year and presented at Evidence Live. Jeff Aronson has been thinking again about the word manifesto. The Indo-European root MAN meant a hand. The Latin word was manus, from which we get words such as maintain, manacle, manage, manège, manicure, manipulate, […]
Harmful medicines sometimes stay on the market for longer than they should. When that happens, people are unnecessarily exposed to medicines that may adversely affect their health. Igho Onakpoya The benefit-harm balance of new medicines is often not fully known at the time marketing licences are granted. More information about harms often becomes apparent […]
Investigators should report rare and very rare adverse events in clinical trials: Igho Onakpoya reports why it is important that all events are reported irrespective of their frequency. Even though they may not give a signal in any single trial, a meta-analysis could reveal potentially important drug-adverse event associations that might require further […]
A recent trial of keyhole knee surgery for partial meniscectomy showed surgical intervention was ineffective. Surgery rates have varied markedly over time and across the UK, suggesting there is a lot of overtreatment. Carl Heneghan Published in the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases the randomised trial reported arthroscopic partial meniscectomy was no more effective than […]
More intense monitoring makes no difference to outcomes in type 2 diabetes and costs a lot more, but not everyone agrees on what should be done in practice. Carl Heneghan, Ben Goldacre Glucose self-monitoring with automated feedback messaging in type 2 diabetics not taking insulin makes no difference to patient outcomes and costs a lot […]
The EBM library signposts some essential reading for the practice of Evidence-Based Medicine. In this part of the library, we highlight papers that reflect the role of systematic reviews in policymaking. Kamal R. Mahtani One of the purposes of conducting systematic reviews is to provide accessible evidence to inform clinical decisions. In healthcare, they […]