From science to everyday clinical practice. Need for systematic evaluation of research findings

This paper focuses on problems attached to using scientific results in everyday clinical practice. Based on examples we raise the question: Are research results obtained under ideal scientific conditions, presented to health professionals and the public in a way that creates unrealistic expectations of the health services? We suggest that the clinical researcher, when reporting scientific results, should be obliged to consider technological aspects, i.e. the human and monetary cost, effectiveness, compliance, the expected consequence for the patient, professionals and society, and resources needed to accomplish it. Presented with these considerations, actors of the health care scene in terms of professionals, administrators, politicians and patients should be better suited to decide if implementation of a new treatment should take place. Such procedures will give the population and the politicians more realistic expectations of the contributions of medical science and the health services in general.