How do you decide which treatments to recommend to your patients? Every day, family physicians must evaluate the benefits and harms of dozens of tests and treatments for which reliable practice guidelines are often lacking.1 In 2003, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) established its Effective Health Care Program to provide patients, physicians, and policy makers with more information to compare the effectiveness of health care interventions.2 This program supports a national network of Evidence-Based Practice Centers that produce systematic reviews of the evidence for commonly used interventions ranging from drugs for type 2 diabetes mel-litus3 to treatments for localized prostate cancer.
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