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- Helps define the patient population in the search (example:
are we looking for information about patients with a history of an
Myocardial Infarction or patients who do not have coronary artery disease?)
- Helps clarify outcomes:
- Meaningful clinical outcomes (example: reduction in
likelihood of an acute MI)
- Surrogate outcomes (example: cholesterol level)
- Do we really care if the patient’s cholesterol
level comes down or if she has another MI? Do we really care if
the patient’s blood sugar comes down, or is the likelihood that he
progresses to have retinopathy, nephropathy, CVA, MI, PVD, neuropathy
etc. reduced? (Most all of the literature looking at the effectiveness
of the treatment of diabetes measures surrogate outcomes of blood
sugar or glycosolated hemoglobin and not reduction in end organ damage
from DM. What outcomes do you think are more important?
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