0000000000302849
AUTHOR
Gisela Schott
Declaration and Handling of Conflicts of Interest in Guidelines
Clinical guidelines are developed in order to support physicians and patients in specific clinical situations when decisions concerning diagnosis and treatment are made. Recommendations provided in guidelines are based on the findings of clinical studies and on expert opinion. Identical study findings may be evaluated differently depending on whether or not guideline authors have conflicts of interest (1). A conflict of interest is defined as a circumstance that gives rise to a risk that professional judgement or actions concerning a primary interest may be inappropriately influenced by a secondary interest (2, 3). A conflict of interest is therefore a state of affairs, not a biased evaluat…
Impact of physicians’ participation in non-interventional post-marketing studies on their prescription habits: A retrospective 2-armed cohort study in Germany
Background Non-interventional post-marketing studies (NIPMSs) sponsored by pharmaceutical companies are controversial because, while they are theoretically useful instruments for pharmacovigilance, some authors have hypothesized that they are merely marketing instruments used to influence physicians’ prescription behavior. So far, it has not been shown, to our knowledge, whether NIPMSs actually do have an influence on prescription behavior. The objective of this study was therefore to investigate whether physicians’ participation in NIPMSs initiated by pharmaceutical companies has an impact on their prescription behavior. In addition, we wanted to analyze whether specific characteristics of…