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| Preface | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The Foundation of Clinical Decisions | |
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| The clinical decision process | |
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| Clinical data | |
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| Scales of measurement | |
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| Taking the history | |
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| The physical examination | |
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| Paraclinical findings | |
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| Global assessments | |
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| Reliability and Relevance of Clinical Data | |
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| Clinical data on an interval scale | |
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| Clinical data on an ordinal scale | |
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| Clinical data on a binary scale | |
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| Descriptive paraclinical findings | |
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| Descriptive physical signs | |
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| The statistical concept of normality | |
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| The concept of disease | |
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| Interpretation and relevance | |
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| Indicators | |
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| The Disease Classification | |
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| The historical perspective | |
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| The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries | |
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| The nineteenth and twentieth centuries | |
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| The theoretical perspective | |
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| The mechanical model of disease | |
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| Molecular biology | |
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| Disease and the environment | |
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| The practical perspective | |
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| Name of disease | |
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| Definition | |
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| Causes of disease (aetiology and pathogenesis) | |
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| The clinical picture | |
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| Diagnosis and treatment | |
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| Diagnosis | |
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| The diagnostic universe | |
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| Diagnosis of diseases with an accessible defining criterion | |
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| The direct method for assessing the accuracy of test results | |
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| The indirect method for assessing the accuracy of test results | |
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| Terminological confusion | |
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| Quantitative data | |
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| Diagnosis of disease with a concealed defining criterion | |
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| Syndrome diagnosis | |
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| Three patients | |
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| Diagnosis in practice | |
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| Frequential and subjective probabilities | |
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| Diagnostic strategy | |
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| Uncontrolled Experience | |
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| Uncontrolled experience in a pre-scientific era | |
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| The numerical method | |
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| The era of laboratory research | |
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| The spontaneous course of the disease | |
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| Regression towards the mean | |
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| Run of luck | |
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| Bias | |
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| The placebo effect | |
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| The need for controlled experience | |
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| Alternative edicine: pseudoscientific thinking | |
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| The Randomized Clinical Trial | |
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| Selection of patients | |
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| Randomization | |
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| Choice of treatment in the control group | |
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| Principles of blinding | |
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| Cross-over trials | |
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| Measures of benefits and harms | |
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| Stopping rules | |
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| Assessment of the results | |
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| Statistical analysis | |
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| Hypothesis testing | |
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| Estimation | |
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| Other statistical measures of effect | |
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| Subgroup analyses | |
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| Systematic reviews | |
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| From trials to practice | |
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| Evidence-based medicine and commercial pressures | |
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| Medicine and the Humanities | |
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| The four components of clinical reasoning | |
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| The empathic-hermeneutic component | |
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| The ethical component | |
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| Three kinds of norms | |
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| The foundation of health care ethics | |
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| The structure of ethical reasoning | |
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| Assessment of the facts of the case | |
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| Consequential considerations | |
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| Deontological considerations | |
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| The ethical decision | |
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| Quality of life | |
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| Autonomy and paternalism | |
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| Clinical examples | |
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| Clinical research ethics | |
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| Critical Reading of Medical Journals | |
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| Logical analysis of medical papers | |
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| Assets and limitations of cohort studies | |
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| Assets and limitations of case-control studies | |
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| Other designs | |
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| Descriptive statistics | |
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| Estimation | |
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| Testing hypotheses | |
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| Pseudohypothetico-deductive logic | |
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| Wrong sampling unit | |
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| Sample size calculations | |
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| Interpretation of P-values | |
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| Statistical tests | |
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| Examples | |
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| Correlation analysis | |
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| Life table analysis | |
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| References | |
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| Index | |