Greenhalgh and colleagues report that the “second aspect of evidence based medicine’s crisis… is the sheer volume of evidence available”. EBM is not the purveyor of what is studied and published. EBM is a set of skills to effectively locate, evaluate, and apply the best available evidence. For much of what we do there is actually a paucity of research data answering clinically relevant questions (despite there being alot of studies- which gets back to her first complaint about distortion of the evidence brand. See part 1 of this series). I teach my students and housestaff to follow the Haynes’ 6S hierarchy when trying to answer clinical questions. As much of the hierarchy is preappraised literature someone else has had to deal with the “sheer volume of evidence”. Many clinical questions can be answered at the top of the pyramid.

I concur with Greenhalgh that guidelines are out of control. I have written on this previously. We don’t need multiple guidelines on the same topic, often with conflicting recommendations. I believe that we would be better off with central control of guideline development under the auspices of an agency like AHRQ or the Institute of Medicine. It would be much easier to produce trustworthy guidelines and guidelines on topics for which we truly need guidance. (Really American Academy of Otolaryngology….do we need a guideline on ear wax removal?) It can be done.  AHCPR previously made great guidelines on important topics. Unfortunately we will probably never go back to the good ole days. Guidelines are big business now, with specialty societies staking out their territory and government and companies bastardizing them into myriad performance measures.