The Fallacy of Guidelines

I hate it when someone tries to tell me how I should take care of my patients. However, we are now working with the politics of "evidence-based medicine". This era is characterized by groups of "experts" who get together and compile guidelines on how best to manage various medical conditions. The fact that our knowledge of patient management is constantly changing is of little concern to these "experts" nor are they of concern to third party payers who insist that the guidelines be followed or they will not pay for the care provided. Guidelines are generally based on a review of the literature pertaining to a particular condition and the evidence is classified as to its credibility. For example, the most reliable evidence is graded as IA, meaning that it is based on more than one prospective randomized trial without important limitations. Level IB evidence is based on a single controlled randomized trial or non-randomized studies but the trial(s) have limitations such as inconsistent results or flaws in the methods used to derive the conclusions. A Level I classifications means that there is general agreement that the procedure or treatment is beneficial and effective. Examples of methodological flaws would be lack of blinding of the researchers or subjective determinations of the results. Trials which lose a large number of patients to follow up would probably be classified as IB. Observational studies may be cited in the guidelines but they would not have the weight of ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news