I'm not sure I understand the terminology. If "medical reversal" means -- apologies if I misunderstood -- "stopping a medical treatment which hasn't been shown to be helpful, or one that is not backed by evidence", why is the reversal itself the problem?
Shouldn't the focus be on applying treatments backed by robust evidence in the first place, rather than on medical reversals? Of course the two are connected, but the wording seems odd. Medical reversals seem to be a symptom of the problem, not the root cause.
Of course, I might be misunderstanding the terminology.
edit: I've read the abstract and it seems I am indeed misunderstanding the definition, but for the life of me I cannot understand what "medical reversal" means in layman words.
I was wondering the same thing. I found this definition:
Medical reversal occurs when a new clinical trial — superior to predecessors by virtue of better controls, design, size, or endpoints — contradicts current clinical practice. In recent years, we have witnessed several instances of medical reversal. Famous examples include the class 1C anti-arrhythmics post-myocardial infarction (contradicted by the CAST trial) or routine stenting for stable coronary disease (contradicted by the COURAGE trial).
The article I link to has one author common with the paper originally posted, way above. Shame that this author seems to have lost the skill of ensuring that terms are propery defined.
I think you're not misunderstanding, it's exactly what the term "Medical Reversal" is trying to capture.
I.e. of course it's only a symptom, but it's something that can be measured to show there's a problem early on.
Ah, thanks! So indeed I was mistaken. I misunderstood it to mean "reverting an unproven/inconclusive treatment" when it actually means "conducting an unproven/inconclusive treatment".
I was confused because "reversal" sounds to me as the act of ceasing to do something, i.e. "reverting" the treatment (if you're a programmer: I thought of "reversal" as in "reverting a mistaken commit using git"). I now see it's a technical term which means the opposite!
Hmm. Sorry, no, that's not my understanding. I think the phenomenon of discovery is distinct from the changing of behavior. I believe it is the discovery itself that is called a "medical reversal." I think the submitted paper defines it in relatively laymen's terms: "Medical reversal occurs when a new clinical trial — superior to predecessors by virtue of better controls, design, size, or endpoints — contradicts current clinical practice."
I think an important difference is that current clinical practice is not necessarily thought to be "unproven/inconclusive." Rather, I think people think it has a solid foundation, but better investigation reveals that not to be true.
Shouldn't the focus be on applying treatments backed by robust evidence in the first place, rather than on medical reversals? Of course the two are connected, but the wording seems odd. Medical reversals seem to be a symptom of the problem, not the root cause.
Of course, I might be misunderstanding the terminology.
edit: I've read the abstract and it seems I am indeed misunderstanding the definition, but for the life of me I cannot understand what "medical reversal" means in layman words.