Evaluation of medical data: role of clinical trials.
Over the centuries, methods have been developed to evaluate diseases and their treatments. One systematic method is the case series, in which groups of patients are followed over time to estimate the likelihood of various disease outcomes, either with or without treatment. A more efficient method for assessing treatment effectiveness is the clinical trial. Both methods have been used for evaluating current treatments of macular diseases. the combination of case series and clinical trials has been used to advantage for many of these diseases. However, when one wants to be certain that a treatment is effective, there is no substitute for the clinical trial.
D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D008028:Light Coagulation / Q000592:standards; D008266:Macula Lutea; D011897:Random Allocation; D012164:Retinal Diseases / Q000601:surgery