In agreement

I agree with Dr Bonisteel’s letter in the October 2009 issue of Canadian Family Physician.1 Clinical guidelines are often very helpful but are increasingly seen as gospel truths. They aim to help providers condense and make sense of an overwhelming amount of clinical evidence. However, one cannot help notice that changes in guidelines tend to medicalize increasing numbers of our apparently healthy population on the basis of minimal advantages to the individual patient. I now rely on groups such as the Therapeutics Education Collaboration to make sense of the guidelines that were supposed to help me make sense of current research.

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