Author: Alehandro R. Jadad
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405132663
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 170
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Book Description
Randomized controlled trials are one of the most powerful and revolutionary tools of research. This book is a convenient and accessible description of the underlying principles and practice of randomized controlled trials and their role in clinical decision-making. Structured in a jargon-free question-and-answer format, each chapter provides concise and understandable information on a different aspect of randomized controlled trials, from the basics of trial design and terminology to the interpretation of results and their use in driving evidence-based medicine. The authors end each chapter with their musings, going beyond the evidence or citations, and sometimes even beyond orthodox correctness to share their thoughts and concerns about different aspects of randomized controlled trials, and their role within the health system. Updated to include insights from the last decade, this second edition challenges over-reliance on randomized controlled trials by debating their strengths and limitations and discussing their optimal use in modern healthcare. It also includes a new and increasingly relevant chapter on the ethics of randomized trials. World renowned writers and thinkers Drs Jadad and Enkin bring you this invaluable book for busy health professionals who wish to understand the theory of randomized controlled trials and their influence on clinical, research or policy decisions.
Author: John N.S. Matthews
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1420011308
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Evidence from randomized controlled clinical trials is widely accepted as the only sound basis for assessing the efficacy of new medical treatments. Statistical methods play a key role in all stages of these trials, including their justification, design, and analysis. This second edition of Introduction to Randomized Controlled Clinical Trials prov
Author: Christopher J. Bulpitt
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1475763581
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
Bradford Hill has defined a clinical trial as "A carefully and ethically designed experiment with the aim of answering some precisely framed question" [1]. This definition specifies a careful design and requires the provision of adequate controls. Random allocation of treatments to subjects is important to ensure is entitled that the treated and control groups are similar. Therefore this book Randomised Controlled Clinical Trials. We can define a randomised controlled trial by rewriting Bradford Hill's definition as follows, "A carefully and ethi cally designed experiment which includes the provision of adequate and ap propriate controls by a process of randomisation, so that precisely framed questions can be answered. " I am a firm advocate ofRandomised Controlled Clinical Trials but intend to give a balanced view of the advantages and disadvantages of these ethical experiments. This book is directed primarily at the medical research worker, although certain chapters may find a wider application. When discussing a randomised controlled trial, it is neither practicable nor desirable to divorce theory from practice, however the first ten chapters con centrate mainly on theory, and the remainder focus on practice. The segment on trial design is followed by sections on writing the protocol, designing the forms, conducting the trial, and analysing the results. This book is meant to serve both as a reference manual and a practical guide to the design and performance of a trial.
Author: Alejandro R. Jadad
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780727912084
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 123
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Book Description
The contributors to this study present a balanced view of the strengths and weaknesses of randomised controlled trials in the medical setting. They cover all the essential issues without using statistics.
Author: David A. Richards
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134470568
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 444
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Book Description
Health and human services currently face a series of challenges – such as aging populations, chronic diseases and new endemics – that require highly complex responses, and take place in multiple care environments including acute medicine, chronic care facilities and the community. Accordingly, most modern health care interventions are now seen as ‘complex interventions’ – activities that contain a number of component parts with the potential for interactions between them which, when applied to the intended target population, produce a range of possible and variable outcomes. This in turn requires methodological developments that also take into account changing values and attitudes related to the situation of patients’ receiving health care. The first book to place complex interventions within a coherent system of research enquiry, this work is designed to help researchers understand the research processes involved at each stage of developing, testing, evaluating and implementing complex interventions, and assist them to integrate methodological activities to produce secure, evidence-based health care interventions. It begins with conceptual chapters which set out the complex interventions framework, discuss the interrelation between knowledge development and evidence, and explore how mixed methods research contributes to improved health. Structured around the influential UK Medical Research Council guidance for use of complex interventions, four sections, each comprised of bite-sized chapters written by multidisciplinary experts in the area, focus on: - Developing complex interventions - Assessing the feasibility of complex interventions and piloting them - Evaluating complex interventions - Implementing complex interventions. Accessible to students and researchers grappling with complex interventions, each substantive chapter includes an introduction, bulleted learning objectives, clinical examples, a summary and further reading. The perspectives of various stakeholders, including patients, families and professionals, are discussed throughout as are the economic and ethical implications of methods. A vital companion for health research, this book is suitable for readers from multidisciplinary disciplines such as medical, nursing, public health, health services research, human services and allied healthcare backgrounds.
Author: Jos W.R. Twisk
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030818659
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 167
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Book Description
This book provides a practical guide to the analysis of data from randomized controlled trials (RCT). It gives an answer to the question of how to estimate the intervention effect in an appropriate way. This problem is examined for different RCT designs, such as RCTs with one follow-up measurement, RCTs with more than one follow-up measurement, cluster RCTs, cross-over trials, stepped wedge trials, and N-of-1 trials. The statistical methods are explained in a non-mathematical way and are illustrated by extensive examples. All datasets used in the book are available for download, so readers can reanalyse the examples to gain a better understanding of the methods used. Although most examples are taken from epidemiological and clinical studies, this book is also highly recommended for researchers working in other fields.
Author: Greg Guest
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1452241333
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 833
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Book Description
Providing a comprehensive foundation for planning, executing, and monitoring public health research of all types, this book goes beyond traditional epidemiologic research designs to cover technology-based approaches emerging in the new public health landscape.
Author: Brian L. Strom
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118708008
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 756
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Book Description
The Textbook of Pharmacoepidemiology provides a streamlined text for evaluating the safety and effectiveness of medicines. It includes a brief introduction to pharmacoepidemiology as well as sections on data sources, methodology and applications. Each chapter includes key points, case studies and essential references. One-step resource to gain understanding of the subject of pharmacoepidemiology at an affordable price Gives a perspective on the subject from academia, pharmaceutical industry and regulatory agencies Designed for students with basic knowledge of epidemiology and public health Includes many case studies to illustrate pharmacoepidemiology in real clinical setting
Author: U. S. Department of Health and Human Services
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781484077146
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 108
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Book Description
The internal validity of a study reflects the extent to which the design and conduct of the study have prevented bias(es). One of the key steps in a systematic review is assessment of a study's internal validity, or potential for bias. This assessment serves to: (1) identify the strengths and limitations of the included studies; (2) investigate, and potentially explain heterogeneity in findings across different studies included in a systematic review; and (3) grade the strength of evidence for a given question. The risk of bias assessment directly informs one of four key domains considered when assessing the strength of evidence. With the increase in the number of published systematic reviews and development of systematic review methodology over the past 15 years, close attention has been paid to the methods for assessing internal validity. Until recently this has been referred to as “quality assessment” or “assessment of methodological quality.” In this context “quality” refers to “the confidence that the trial design, conduct, and analysis has minimized or avoided biases in its treatment comparisons.” To facilitate the assessment of methodological quality, a plethora of tools has emerged. Some of these tools were developed for specific study designs (e.g., randomized controlled trials (RCTs), cohort studies, case-control studies), while others were intended to be applied to a range of designs. The tools often incorporate characteristics that may be associated with bias; however, many tools also contain elements related to reporting (e.g., was the study population described) and design (e.g., was a sample size calculation performed) that are not related to bias. The Cochrane Collaboration recently developed a tool to assess the potential risk of bias in RCTs. The Risk of Bias (ROB) tool was developed to address some of the shortcomings of existing quality assessment instruments, including over-reliance on reporting rather than methods. Several systematic reviews have catalogued and critiqued the numerous tools available to assess methodological quality, or risk of bias of primary studies. In summary, few existing tools have undergone extensive inter-rater reliability or validity testing. Moreover, the focus of much of the tool development or testing that has been done has been on criterion or face validity. Therefore it is unknown whether, or to what extent, the summary assessments based on these tools differentiate between studies with biased and unbiased results (i.e., studies that may over- or underestimate treatment effects). There is a clear need for inter-rater reliability testing of different tools in order to enhance consistency in their application and interpretation across different systematic reviews. Further, validity testing is essential to ensure that the tools being used can identify studies with biased results. Finally, there is a need to determine inter-rater reliability and validity in order to support the uptake and use of individual tools that are recommended by the systematic review community, and specifically the ROB tool within the Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) Program. In this project we focused on two tools that are commonly used in systematic reviews. The Cochrane ROB tool was designed for RCTs and is the instrument recommended by The Cochrane Collaboration for use in systematic reviews of RCTs. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale is commonly used for nonrandomized studies, specifically cohort and case-control studies.
Author: Peter G. Smith
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198732864
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 479
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Book Description
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Before new interventions are released into disease control programmes, it is essential that they are carefully evaluated in field trials'. These may be complex and expensive undertakings, requiring the follow-up of hundreds, or thousands, of individuals, often for long periods. Descriptions of the detailed procedures and methods used in the trials that have been conducted have rarely been published. A consequence of this, individuals planning such trials have few guidelines available and little access to knowledge accumulated previously, other than their own. In this manual, practical issues in trial design and conduct are discussed fully and in sufficient detail, that Field Trials of Health Interventions may be used as a toolbox' by field investigators. It has been compiled by an international group of over 30 authors with direct experience in the design, conduct, and analysis of field trials in low and middle income countries and is based on their accumulated knowledge and experience. Available as an open access book via Oxford Medicine Online, this new edition is a comprehensive revision, incorporating the new developments that have taken place in recent years with respect to trials, including seven new chapters on subjects ranging from trial governance, and preliminary studies to pilot testing.
