STUDENT EDITORIAL

Today, scientific knowledge is progressing fast and medicine, with its all important impact on patients ' lives, is no exception. Everyday new medications and therapeutic procedures are being adopted or withdrawn following research findings proving them remarkable or worthless respectively. Protocols of treatment procedures are constantly under revision as a result of new evidence. What was new yesterday is old today and may become obsolete tomorrow. In this age of information technology, such is the pace of change and patient awareness that any physician who does not follow the latest recommendations may be awarded a professional death sentence. To date, several clinicians may actually be practicing age old remedies and treatments quite profitably, the authors are of the opinion that the scenario is likely to change quite soon. With rapid advancement in medical sciences, the ability of doctors to gather more and more information and remain up to date becomes difficult; if not impossible. At the same time, patients are armed to the tooth with latest information about their respective conditions. Even before the doctors tell them about their condition, the patients sometimes already know the differential diagnosis with the available treatment options. In this age of information technology, it is not just useful but also mandatory for the clinicians to stay abreast of developments and choose the best treatment option for their patient. There is an evident time lag between discovery of new facts and evidence their inclusion in medical texts to be transmitted to the readers. Medical textbooks are often out of date by the time they are published. Moreover, they are often not based on best and latest available evidence and research findings.(1) Hence one may argue that textbooks alone aren’t sufficient to ensure optimum, appropriate and up-to-date clinical decision making for the doctors. For example on