Quality of Clinical Trials
Evidence-based medicine attempts to objectively evaluate the quality of clinical research by critically assessing techniques reported by researchers in their publications.
- Trial design considerations. High-quality studies have clearly defined eligibility criteria and have minimal missing data.
- Generalizability considerations. Studies may only be applicable to narrowly defined patient populations and may not be generalizable to other clinical contexts.
- Follow-up. Sufficient time for defined outcomes to occur can influence the study outcomes and the statistical power of a study to detect differences between a treatment and control arm.
- Power. A mathematical calculation can determine if the number of patients is sufficient to detect a difference between treatment arms. A negative study may reflect a lack of benefit, or simply a lack of sufficient quantities of patients to detect a difference.
Read more about this topic: Evidence-based Medicine
Famous quotes containing the words quality of, quality and/or trials:
“One is conscious of no brave and noble earnestness in it, of no generalized passion for intellectual and spiritual adventure, of no organized determination to think things out. What is there is a highly self-conscious and insipid correctness, a bloodless respectability submergence of matter in manner—in brief, what is there is the feeble, uninspiring quality of German painting and English music.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don’t know—Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel—the quality of philosophy.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“Old age is not a disease—it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.”
—Maggie Kuhn (b. 1905)