Do contact lenses shape up? [guest editorial]

Abstract

There is an increasing emphasis in health-care delivery on the need for evidence-based practice. While the principle of basing clinical decisions on the available evidence is long-standing, applying the appropriate and tested evidence to specific problems has now become a formalised and recognised discipline. Resources and methods to achieve this are numerous and wide-spread. In the most recent edition of his book Studying a Study and Testing a Test, Reigelman1 points out that 'efficiently reading the research evidence is the key to successfully putting progress into practice'. He provides a very useful and effective framework to follow in evaluating health-care evidence presented in the scientific literature and identifying flaws in that evidence, and establishing whether those flaws are 'fatal'….