[Evidence based surgery. A necessary tool]

Evidence-based surgery is a tool that has been adopted worldwide by surgeons. As all decisions must be current and have a scientific basis, the approach for performing it must be standardised. Five important steps are required to perform surgery based on evidence. Convert the need for information into a question that can be answered, finding the best information to answer that question, critical evaluation of the evidence, and its validity, impact and applicability, integrating the evidence with your own experience, and with the evaluation of the patients. This should take into account their biology, values and specific circumstances, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the execution of steps 1-4 and propose how to improve them.

This article presents the main tools to perform surgery properly based on evidence.