Akhtar Sherin.
Randomized controlled trials and the credibility of medical research.
Kust Med J Jan ;2(1):1-2.

Although the number of medical journals published in Pakistan is increasing every year and so far 53 journals are included in Index Pakistan (i.e. recognized by PMDC) and few more are expected to be included in the list in the near future, the poor quality of published research work is still a major concern among medical professionals. Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) is the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values. EBM provides a grading scale of various types of clinical evidences, based on the strength of their study designs with minimization of various biases. Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Oxford, categorized different levels of evidence for therapy/prevention/etiology/harm and listed systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on top as level-1 evidence. Unfortunately, the level of published research in Pakistani medical journals is not encouraging and the top two Pakistani medical journals (JCPSP & JPMA) had published only 9% of articles having level-1 evidence and 55% having level-4 evidence.

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