Jeffrey BrainardScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.Soon after the COVID-19 pandemic started, physicians at the Mayo Clinic wanted guidance, and fast.
How should they treat patients with blood clots? What outcomes should they expect for pregnant women?They didn’t have time to sort through the flood of scientific papers, recalls Hassan Murad, a Mayo internist.
Some research reported results that contradicted other papers, and medical societies hadn’t agreed on clinical guidelines.Normally, such confusion would be sorted out with the help of “systematic reviews”: exhaustive, scholarly evaluations of relevant literature and data by groups of specialists.