Clinical Practice Guidelines and Scientific Evidence
- Francesco Enia, MD francescoenia@gmail.comDivisione di CardiologiaAO V. CervelloPalermo, Italy
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
- KEYWORDS:
- ACUTE CORONARY SYNDROMES
- AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION
- CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES
- CLINICAL TRIALS AS TOPIC
- EDUCATION, MEDICAL
- EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE
- HOSPITALS
- OUTCOME ASSESSMENT (HEALTH CARE)
- PRACTICE GUIDELINES AS TOPIC
To the Editor: The study by Dr Tricoci and colleagues1 underlined the difference between the reality of clinical work (which is extremely complex and cannot easily be reduced to simple standardized procedures) and clinical practice guidelines. These guidelines are intended to cover clinical reality as far as possible. However, the broader the reality, the less precise the guidelines become. From 1984 to 2008, the number of recommendations increased from 1330 to 1973 (a 48% increase), but only 11% of these recommendations were classified as level of evidence A, with 48% classified as level of evidence C.
Jorge Luis Borges wrote a 1-paragraph story2 of a fictional empire where the art of cartography had attained great perfection. The map of a single province occupied an entire city. In time these gigantic maps were no longer satisfactory to the cartographers, who then designed a map of the empire with a …
