In doing your own research, the key question to keep in mind is: “How strong is the evidence supporting this recommendation?”

Look for solid sources: Medical advances arrive constantly, so you need to pay attention to new findings, but you need to be careful about what you pay attention to. A source such as the National Cholesterol Education Program is a solid one, and there are three ongoing clinical trials involving high-risk individuals, so when those results are in, its recommendations could be modified again.

Beware the media: Media reports need to find “news” and even scientific papers compete for attention, so both can pump up the apparent importance of a research project. One area for skepticism is questionable statistics, especially studies that emphasize the change in relative risk or relative improvement instead of absolute risk or absolute improvement. In other words, if a treatment is claimed to reduce your risk of heart attack by 50%, the treatment sounds like it makes a great deal of difference. A 50% reduction in your relative risk, however, could mean that it cuts your absolute risk from 2% to 1%. Relative risk reduction is often used in reports to make the research sound more important than it really is, says Robert Flaherty.

Beware the single study: Another danger in the media is a focus on a single study with a surprising new finding. Be very careful about basing decisions on a single study. Sometimes, the surprising study will receive a great deal of attention, and the study that refutes it will be ignored.

Look for the best studies: According to Flaherty: “When I first started looking at journal articles and research from an EBM approach about seven or eight years ago, 80% of the research articles I found were just poor quality research. And now, things have improved to the point where only about 50% of research is poor. Either poorly done, or poorly interpreted or irrelevant.”

Thanks to the EBM emphasis, there is a trend for the publication of review articles called meta-analyses that subject the literature to a sophisticated new kind of scrutiny. They re-analyze each article to see which ones provide good data and which are less reliable, throwing out the bad data and coming up with new findings about what the literature really indicates about a test, treatment, or condition.

Keep the focus on evidence: If you are looking at clinical treatment guidelines, look for signs that the guidelines are truly evidence-based. Many are not, particularly older guidelines that have not been updated. One of the pioneers of EBM calls these “BOGSATs,” because a “Bunch of Old Guys Sitting Around Talking” made them up. In the medical literature, there are increasing references to “medical mythology” and conventional wisdom taught in medical school that turned out later to be untrue.

The best websites and guidelines rate the quality of evidence on which a recommendation is based. For example, the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality describes its top level, Level I, as “evidence obtained from at least one properly randomized controlled study.” Level III is derived from “opinons of respected authorities, based on clinical experience, descriptive studies and case reports, or reports of expert committees.”

Recognize that we don’t know all the answers: In some cases, even well-informed patients may not be able to find the information they seek because not every clinical question has been evaluated using EBM techniques. And even if your subject has, the most current evidence still may not tell you which treatment is best for you. It’s common to have to weigh the benefits and harms of treatment carefully. This could involve such tried and true decision-making aids as writing down the pros and cons of different treatments and approaches, and making your own decision flow diagram.

For more information, there is a good primer on how consumers can put evidence-based medicine into practice for themselves from Consumers Union. Click on “Staying Healthy” under “Treatment Ratings” at consumerreportshealth.org (http://www.consumerreports.org/mg/treatment-centers/staying-healthy.htm).