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Volume 100: clinical investigations: where next?
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
In this 100th volume of the British Journal of Anaesthesia, it seems appropriate to consider the role of clinical investigations in contributing to our current clinical practice and how this might change in the future. Ideally, clinical investigations are a scientific assessment of a clinical problem involving direct data collection from patients. This may be either in the form of an experimental study (either randomized or non-randomized) to determine the benefit or safety of an intervention, for example, treatment or prevention of disease, or an observational study, which may be either descriptive (with no comparator group) or analytical (e.g. cohort studies or case–control studies).1 The hope is that high-quality clinical research will provide a basis for evidence-based medical practice and improve the quality of healthcare delivered by our speciality.
We need to consider the widely acknowledged challenges facing clinical research which include concerns over maintaining and extending academic anaesthesia,
1 Edinburgh, UK
2 Herlev, Denmark
* E-mail: lesley.colvin@ed.ac.uk