Attitude to evidence-based practice amongst international thoracic surgeons: preliminary observations from a web-based survey

Evidence-based medicine is a process to de-emphasize the role of intuition and anecdotal experiences as a guide to clinical practice.We performed a survey to assess the comprehension and attitude toward evidence -based practice amongst a group of thoracic surgeons.There were 38 responders out of 151 surgeons.Up to 23% of responders failed in giving the correct definition of evidence-based medicine.Factors correlated with wrong definition were lower surgical volume and poor attendance to international meetings.Our survey suggests t hat more focus on evidence-based medicine concepts should be put during surgical training.