title: Evidence-based medicine in plastic surgery: where did it come from and where is it going?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Evidence-based medicine, particularly randomized controlled trials, influence many of the daily decisions within plastic surgery as well as nearly every other medical specialty, and will continue to play a larger role in medicine in the future. Even though it is certainly not a new idea, evidence-based medicine continues to remain a hot topic among members of the healthcare community. As evidence-based medicine continues to grow and evolve, it is becoming more important for all physicians to understand the fundamentals of evidence-based medicine: how evidence-based medicine has changed, and how to successfully incorporate it into the daily practice of medicine.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Admittedly, the wide acceptance and implementation of evidence-based medicine has been slower in surgical fields such as plastic surgery given the difficulty in performing large scale blinded randomized controlled trials due to the inherent nature of a surgical intervention as a treatment modality. Despite these challenges, the plastic surgery literature has recently begun to respond to the demand for more evidence-based medicine.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Today's plastic surgeons are making a concerted embrace evidence-based medicine by increasing the amount of out of high-level clinical evidence and should be encouraged to continue to further their endeavors in the field of evidence-based medicine in the future.
authors.affiliation: The Department of Surgery, Division of Plastic Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Joseph A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Ricci
authors.forename: Naman S
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Desai
mesh_terms: D015510:Clinical Medicine; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine / Q000639:trends*; D013518:Surgery, Plastic / Q000592:standards*
keywords: Cochrane database; evidence‐based medicine; levels of evidence; plastic surgery; randomized controlled trial