Towards evidence-based medicine in cardiothoracic surgery: best BETS

Cardiothoracic surgeons are faced with the dilemma that many clinical questions in their daily practice to do not have universally agreed answers, but patients increasingly demand the 'best practice' from their doctors. In addition time pressures mean that clinicians are unable to keep up with the full spectrum of published research and current resources that collate evidence for clinicians have few if any resources for cardiothoracic surgeons. We have adopted an approach pioneered in emergency medicine, namely the Best Evidence Topic or BestBET. Clinicians select a clinical scenario from their daily practice that highlighted an area of controversy. From this, a three-part question is generated and this is…