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OBJECTIVE: The evidence-based medicine movement is gaining influence in many medical specialties. Although many think that clinical medicine always has been based on evidence, the discipline of evidence-based medicine places particular em-phasis on a defined set of principles of critical analysis of individual research reports, methodologically rigorous synthesis of multiple reports, and the collection and dis-semination of evidence repositories that allow rapid application of evidence in prac-tice. This article provides a selective introduction to the discipline of evidence-based medicine as it applies to neurological surgery. METHODS: The vast literature on evidence-based medicine has been reviewed selec-tively to identify resources that are readable, accessible, and relevant to neurosurgery. RESULTS: The history, concepts, and techniques of evidence-based medicine are presented in brief, and educational and methodological resources, as well as evidence repositories, are introduced. CONCLUSION: The techniques of evidence-based medicine are relevant to neuro-logical surgery. There is a relatively large repository of critically analyzed and sum