Haematologists in district general hospitals practise evidence based medicine

A study published by the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford, demonstrated that 82% of primary interventions offered by a general medical team in a 1 month period were evidence based. This contrasted with the traditional view that only 10-20% of medical interventions offered to patients have any scientific foundation. We have carried out a prospective study to determine if the primary interventions we offer to patients are evidence based. In June 1996 all therapeutic decisions which were made in one clinical haematology practice were studied. We included in the analysis the primary haematological diagnosis and the primary intervention offered. Interventions were classified as evidence based if the intervention was based on either evidence from randomized controlled trials, or evidence from well-designed non-randomized prospective or retrospective controlled studies or other convincing non-experimental evidence. In our study 70% of the primary therapeutic decisions made in the 83 patients studied were evidence based. This study reinforces the view that earlier assessments of the degree to which medicine is evidence based were too pessimistic. It is clear from our study that randomized controlled trials need to be developed in areas which are a relatively common clinical problem.