Evidence based medicine (EbM) versus health services research: How is complementary oncology represented therein?

Oncological therapy approaches are measured by hard outcome parameters like survival time, quality of life or at best by the relation of survival time and quality of life (health adjusted life years or quality adjusted life years). Surrogate markers like response under therapy (complete remission, partial remission) or time to progression and laboratory parameters turn out to be invalid therapy aims. Clinical studies with the highest evidence level are randomized controlled trials (RCT). The defined intervention is the variable and further variables (confounders) are preferably excluded from the study design. Lo…