Tips for understanding the medical literature

Medical literature - reviews, papers reporting clinical studies, guidelines, promotional material, presentations, professional and patient websites, and so on - strongly influence clinical management, prescribing and attitudes to disease. A point that's not lost on drug and device manufacturers. As Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, noted: 'For a drug company, a favourable trial is worth thousands of pages of advertising… The quality of the journal will bless the quality of the drug.'¹

Most medical literature comes directly from pharmaceutical companies (promotional material and meetings) or indirectly (sponsored clinical studies and medical education), and may, therefore, be biased.^2,3 This feature discusses some of the traps that can catch uncritical readers and offers some suggestions in helping to decide whether the literature is relevant to your practice.