| [ Summary ] |
While the concept of evidence-based medicine has become well accepted in Japan, health services research, providing evidence as to structure, process or outcome of health care is still scarce. Even when conducted, studies often suffer from suboptimal design and methodology, producing results that cannot lead to meaningful conclusions. To conduct better research, good education and implementation of considerations related to healthservices research methodology, as is taught in the US and Europe, is necessary. The quantity and type of comorbidity screening used for dialysispatients is difficult to study with limited resources. Conducting randomized controlled trials is anideal study modality. However, the current practice of nearly random, studies may be considered to be a national experiment. Of course the results will not free from bias, but careful analysis and interpretation will provide reasonable practiceguidelines. |