Dear Readers,

In this issue of Internal and Emergency Medicine, we start the new Cutting Edge thanks to the cooperation of Professor Nicola Montano and the “Gruppo di Autoformazione Metodologica” (GrAM).

GrAM was founded about 3 years ago by a group of clinicians and statisticians in order to create a connection and reduce the distance between research and medical literature and clinical practice. The progressive shortage of time for continuing education due to the always heavier loads in terms of clinical and administrative duties, associated with the increasing numbers of medical information resources available, may indeed induce a kind of superficial knowledge or even rejection of a critical approach to information. This group hypothesized that one of the ways to overcome this impasse would be to transfer methodological approach within the clinical practice.

The main activities of GrAM are focused on discussions and solving real clinical cases using methodological tools according to evidence-based principles and to apply critical appraisal to medical literature. To this latter point, in the first years of publishing activity, GrAM has already published four letters (Am J Med, Ann Int Med, Lancet and NEJM) commenting on published works.

Another crucial activity is represented by the organization of an annual 3-days and a half residential course (“Approccio critico alla decisione clinica”), totally auto-financed, opened up to 30 residents and physicians, focused on methodology, from clinical practice to clinical research.

For each issue, GrAM will identify two papers recently published in the international literature and examine them in particular regarding their underlying strong and weak points.

We hope you will enjoy this new section.