Equipoise in Research and the Development of Neonatal Interventions for the Management of Respiratory Distress Syndrome: A Historical Perspective

The historical review of how evidence was developed for the management of respiratory distress syndrome in premature infants has not been clearly characterized. Knowledge of this process is essential to understand the role of equipoise and its influence on the decision to evaluate interventions as they were implemented in the practice of medicine. We suspect that errant approaches to clinical equipoise secondary to states of false certainty and false uncertainty have been important barriers to the timely acquisition and implementation of evidence-based knowledge necessary to improve outcomes in this fragile population of infants. When confronted with the decision to test an intervention, physicians should question whether they have lost clinical equipoise based on opinion, expertise, or observational data rather than evidence obtained from methodological inquiry; doing so facilitates reaching clinical equipoise and promotes the application of scientific methodology to answer relevant clinical questions. Timely acquisition of evidence-based knowledge can be viewed as an ethical imperative when the status quo may have negative consequences on outcomes for generations.