[Trends in family medicine--how to sort the wheat from the chaff]

Considering the trends in medicine, time just seems to move at a slower pace in general practice/family medicine than in the medical specialties. Novel medical drugs and therapeutic modalities appear to take longer to become well-established, and sometimes it never happens. There are obvious gaps between the requirements of the guidelines issued by scientific medical societies and the practical implementation of these guidelines by primary care physicians. In health services research this is known as the «evidence-performance gap». The aim of this narrative review is to outline the nature and the dynamics of trends in general practice/family medicine on the one hand and in the medical specialties on the other hand, and to elucidate the potential causes leading to the evidence-performance gaps observed.