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 that more focus on evidence-based medicine concepts should be put during surgical training.