[The "guidelines" of contemporary medicine. What do they represent? What potential implications can one expect? What...

What are exactly clinical guidelines? By whom are they prepared, for which purpose and how? They are supposed to help the practitioner select the most appropriate therapy in a given clinical situation, but do not they represent a threat to medical freedom? Will not they one day acquire legal or economic implications? What are the basic requirements for clinical guidelines to become widely accepted? The answers given to those questions by recent important publications are summarized in this article.