Writing off evidence in evidence-based medicine?

摘要

Evidence-based medicine is a very popular issue in the recent medical literature. As a matter of fact, PubMed lists today, on October 26, 2003, for the term 'evidence-based medicine' 12 685 references. The first papers about this topic appeared in November 1992 [1], and more than 12 590 or > 99% were published during the last 8 years, i.e. after 1995.There are various possibilities to explain such a development, e.g. medicine prior to 1995 was not based on evidence, nor it was not recognized to be based on evidence, or the term evidence has changed its meaning. As it is not exactly flattering for most of us to be identified as practicing medicine without evidence, it might be worth trying to understand what has happened.