Evidence-Based Medicine for Low Back Pain

Abstract

During the last decade, the importance of evidencebased medicine has steadily gained ground. Sackett, in his landmark book published in 1997, defined evidence-based medicine as ‘conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about care of individual patients’ (Sackett 1997). The evidence may refer to new or existing interventions and to preventive, diagnostic or therapeutic interventions. Sackett suggested five steps on how individual care providers can practice evidence-based medicine: (1) ask clinical questions that you can answer, (2) search for the best evidence, (3) critically appraise the evidence, (4) apply the evidence in care for your patient, and (5) self-evaluation (of the above steps). Although this seems very reasonable, it is probably impossible for individual care providers to search for and critically appraise the evidence. At present, there are more than 2 million new articles published every year.