I’ve taken a little break from the “Improving Your Critical Appraisal Skills” series but I’m returning with a few more. These articles are a little treat for our paid subscribers. The first five are here.
I must admit, I rarely read decision analyses. That said, I should appreciate them a whole lot more. First, the whole point of a decision analysis is to determine the best course of action when faced with two or more alternatives. Isn’t this what most medical decision making is about? Decision analyses are done when data from more experimental studies do not exist. We’d all love to live in a world where all clinical questions have been addressed by RCTs. We do not, and we never will. Lastly, and what I find most attractive about decisions analyses, is that they can consider everything important in actual clinical decisions: patients’ values; potential harms and benefits; financial and opportunity costs; and the uncertainties inherent in all of these.
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