Day: February 25, 2008

When the popularity of new surgical procedures outpaces science

In science- and evidence-based medicine, the evaluation of surgical procedures represents a unique challenge that is truly qualitatively different from the challenges in medical specialties. Perhaps the most daunting of these challenges is that it is often either ethically unacceptable or logistically impossible to do the gold-standard clinical trial, a double-blind, randomized placebo trial for an operation. After all, the “placebo” in...

/ February 25, 2008