Understanding measures of treatment effect in clinical trials

Evidence based medicine implies that healthcare professionals are expected to base their practice on the best available evidence. This means that we should acquire the necessary skills for appraising the medical literature, including the ability to understand and interpret the results of published a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Archives of disease in childhood 2005-01, Vol.90 (1), p.54-56
Main Author: Akobeng, A K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
absolute risk
absolute risk reduction
Advantages
ARR
Babies
Biological and medical sciences
BPD
bronchopulmonary dysplasia
clinical trial
Clinical trials
Clinical Trials as Topic - statistics & numerical data
Control Groups
Current Topic
Data Interpretation, Statistical
Drug dosages
Estimates
Evidence-Based Medicine
Forecasts and trends
Health care
Health participants
Hospitals
Humans
Infections
Intervention
Market trend/market analysis
Medical sciences
Methods
NNT
number needed to treat
Population
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
relative risk
relative risk reduction
Respiratory syncytial virus
Risk Assessment
Risk management
risk measures
RRR
RSV
Sample Size
Treatment Outcome
Young Children
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Description
Summary:Evidence based medicine implies that healthcare professionals are expected to base their practice on the best available evidence. This means that we should acquire the necessary skills for appraising the medical literature, including the ability to understand and interpret the results of published articles. This article discusses in a simple, practical, ‘non-statistician’ fashion some of the important outcome measures used to report clinical trials comparing different treatments or interventions. Absolute and relative risk measures are explained, and their merits and demerits discussed. The article aims to encourage healthcare professionals to appreciate the use and misuse of these outcome measures and to empower them to calculate these measures themselves when, as is frequently the case, the authors of some original articles fail to present their results in a more clinically friendly format.
ISSN:0003-9888
1468-2044
DOI:10.1136/adc.2004.052233