CP: Evidence-based Laboratory Medicine: Supporting Decision-Making

There is an implicit acceptance that an evidence-based culture underpins the practice of laboratory medicine, in part because it is perceived as the scientific foundation of medicine. However, several reviews of specific test procedures or technologies have shown that the evi-dence base is limited and in many cases flawed. One of the key deficiencies in the scientific literature on diag-nostic tests often is the absence of an explicit statement of the clinical need, i.e., the clinical or operational question that the use of the test is seeking to answer. Several reviews of the literature on specific procedures have also demonstrated that the experimental method-ology used is flawed with, in some cases, significant bias being introduced. Despite these limitations it is recognized that a more evidence-based approach wil