The principles of evidence-based medicine.

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) integrates individual clinical expertise with the best available external evidence in the care of individual patients. By enabling clinicians to directly appraise and apply current clinical research, EBM deals with the problems of deterioration in clinical performance, information overload, and lag in application of research findings to clinical practice. Thus, EBM is a useful tool to address the problems faced by clinicians attempting to provide optimum, current care for their patients. The rationale for EBM, its principles and application, as well as some limitations, are described here.