Evidence-based medicine and information mastery: application for acute gastrointestinal conditions.

Although advances in medical therapeutics are providing more options to improve patient care, the medical professional, wading through information overload, may not be effective in critically evaluating new data and making informed decisions based on them. Evidence-based medicine and information mastery offer clear guidelines to help health care professionals critically evaluate the relevance and validity of articles as they relate to patient care. When evaluating literature it is important to emphasize patient-oriented evidence that matters, rather than disease-oriented evidence.