Evidence-Based Practice of Neurosurgery: Implications for Quality and Safety

The application of principles of evidence-based medicine to neurosurgical practice is intended to improve patient outcomes. Patient quality and safety improvement efforts are designed to measure actual quality and safety metrics in practice as a way to assess and incentivize actions intended to improve quality and safety. Evidence-based neurosurgery and formal quality and safety projects are complementary, with evidence providing the scientific basis for optimizing care and QI/Safety projects providing real-time feedback on achievement of the goal of improving outcome. In this chapter, the basic principles of evidence-based practice applied to neurosurgery are reviewed and their connection to formal quality and safety efforts is highlighted.