Sunday 21 March 2010

RCTs


The fuddled medic believes that if we should use evidence to support why we use something or believes something.

In poorly understood areas the best way to find out what works and what doesn't is to do a Randomised controlled study. It is thanks to RCTs that we know that women on HRT are at a higher risk of strokes, heart disease and breast cancers.

I have written the above because this made me laugh and i wanted to share it.

4 comments:

  1. So much of our medical work isn't backed by RCTs. For example - the use of diuretics to treat acute left ventricular failure. Though we all know that this is as sensible as using a parachute if you fall out of a plane. This is experiential learning.
    Yet bigger decisions that have huge potential effects on the health of the nation - such as GP walk in clinics, polyclinics - are introduced with neither evidence based rigour nor knowledge based on experience.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Indeed, polyclinics are ridiculous - 99% of people are happy with th system as it is, why change it?

    Suppose if I wanted to I could have expanded on when it is best to do a RCT, really I just wanted to share the above article.

    Apologies for the late reply!

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a wonderful article, it gave me a good smile for lunch time. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is the funniest thing I've read in a long time! Good to see that some people have a sense of humour still!

    ReplyDelete