“ To be or Not 2B ” : Let us stop fooling around with premature scientific evidence !

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is being projected as a scientific God’s secret specialty. Physicians who don’t follow EBM are considered unfit non-professionals. Presumably, in pursuit of truth, all those glamorous official bodies in cardiology bring out umpteen number of protocols, guidelines, advisories, and recommendations. The blueprint for EBM We have the famous 3 levels of recommendation backed up by different levels of evidence. Many of us trust these as the jury’s final verdict for most illnesses in cardiology. I would like to bring one particular issue about this hugely popular model of EBM. It is about one specific class of Indication referred to as 2b. The other day, there was an intense argument for an ICD in a young HCM patient and CRT in DCM based on this 2b stuff. Kindly request all of you to pause for a moment and introspect. We can realize, class 2b plays a mischievous game in EBM with the English language “may and may not”. It tries to push subconsciously an interventional bias from equipoise, in spite of lack of good evidence and clear divergence of opinion and a possible trend towards harm. Further, there is widespread reluctance in many cardiac workgroups to refer class 3 recommendations as an absolute (or at least relative contraindication) It was strange to note one of my colleagues argued that,  class 3 is also a fair recommendation, to accept or reject is in our domain. I was initially shocked to hear that but had to a...
Source: Dr.S.Venkatesan MD - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: evidence based cardiology health economics Public Health Public health issues Social medicine Uncategorized acc aha scai esc guidelines class 2a vs 2b indication Class 2b Indication Comparative efficacy cost effetiveness dr venkatesa Source Type: blogs