Clinical research – clinicl epidemiology

The book serves both as an introduction and as a guide to clinical research. As an introduction, it provides explanations of the clinical research methodology and as a guide, it points to the methods and guidelines to be used in clinical research. Clinical epidemiology deals with the methodology of clinical research, so it seemed appropriate for the subtitle to reflect that. From the pathophysiologic point of view, the book should be titled “Clinical Research, from cause to outcome”, because it parallels the etiopathogenetic course of a disease. The introductory chapters are followed by the chapters on methodology of clinical studies investigating causes, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. The chapter “Systematic Review” elaborates on this important area of clinical research. A systematic review is considered an original scientific paper, because it offers an unbiased synthesis of evidence that makes a new contribution to science. The final chapter is titled “Evidence-Based Medicine” because it deals with the use of methods of clinical epidemiology in the critical appraisal of published clinical research results. It would, therefore, be useful to combine evidence-based medicine with clinical epidemiology.