Evaluating clinical research for your practice

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Eye care professionals today can be bombarded with research data presented at conferences, in professional journals and in manufacturers' sales and marketing materials. Evaluating research findings and using them to make the best decisions for our patients is now an important part of contact lens practice.

This article reviews the essential elements of clinical research and proposes key questions to help the practitioner critically evaluate comparative clinical study results.

What is clinical research?

Clinical research is a study that compares the effect of a 'test' treatment or intervention to a control in human subjects. In the case of contact lens research, the treatment is the contact lens. The purpose of a clinical study is to answer a question, and is the clearest method of determining whether or not the intervention has the hypothesised effect. The aim should be to obtain the least bias and best precision to scientifically answer the clinical question.