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The paper suggests that accurate historical or group comparisons can yield valuable information in surgical evaluation, especially given the decline in surgical RCTs.
Surgeons have lagged behind physicians and oncologists in embracing randomized controlled clinical trials. This paper suggests that a complete, accurate and objective comparison of the outcome of a novel intervention with that of a traditional intervention in previous years, or in another surgical group, can yield valuable information and can lead surgeons to improve their practice. There has recently been a decline in the number of randomized controlled trials published in The British Journal of Surgery; this may reflect the unwillingness of many patients to allow their surgical treatment to be decided by chance.
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A V Pollock (1993) studied this question.
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