The Levels of Evidence in Evidence-Based Medicine

The Levels of Evidence and their role in Evidence-Based Medicine – free full-text /PMC3124652/ – Jul 2012

This article explains how different kinds of evidence for different types of studies are graded. It makes even clearer the crime of the CDC to allow a bunch of addiction specialists to issue practice guidelines out of their area of expertise based on low-quality evidence.

Abstract

As the name suggests, evidence-based medicine (EBM), is about finding evidence and using that evidence to make clinical decisions.

A cornerstone of EBM is the hierarchical system of classifying evidence. This hierarchy is known as the levels of evidence.

it is important to understand the history behind the levels and how they should be interpreted. This paper will focus on the origin of levels of evidence, their relevance to the EBM movement.