EBM in practice: aged care.
Clinical trials often exclude older people, and complex interventions are incompletely studied, making it difficult to implement evidence-based medicine in some areas of aged care. There is good-quality evidence to guide the treatment of many of the common clinical problems encountered in older people. Use of outcome measures in trials (eg, quality-adjusted life-years or disability-adjusted life-years) that are normally applied to the general population may disadvantage older people, for whom regaining independence is the chief concern. There is a gap between the availability of evidence and its application in routine provision of medical care for older people.
Cameron
I D
ID
Department of Medicine, University of Sydney, NSW. ianc@mail.usyd.edu.au
D000368:Aged; D001315:Australia; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D005260:Female; D006299:Health Services for the Aged; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019057:Quality-Adjusted Life Years