Is Clinical Research as Helpful to Clinicians as It Could Be?
Andrea Turolla, Andrew A. Guccione, Roberto Tedeschi, Paolo Pillastrini
Abstract
Translating findings from clinical research to hands-on practice is still far from being effective especially \nwith regard to new treatments. The highest level of evidence (i.e. evidence-based clinical practice \nguidelines, meta-analysis, systematic reviews) provide curated, comprehensive, and consistently \norganized summations and analyses of evidence across groups of subjects, but potentially lack clinical \napplicability and utility for individual cases. With the aim of providing treatment using the best available \nevidence, clinicians are still obliged to discern which research findings are clinically applicable to a \nparticular patient given the broad spectrum of research designs reported in the literature, some of which \nmay fall short of the highest standard of scientific rigor in the analysis of groups represented by \nrandomized controlled trials (RCTs)