Do commonly used clinical trial designs reflect clinical reality? 2009

Elihu Estey
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA. eestey@u.washington.edu

This paper contends that commonly used clinical trial designs do not reflect clinical reality as viewed by patients or physicians. Specifically, randomized phase III designs focus on improvements that are more significant statistically than medically and put an emphasis on avoiding a false positive result that is more appropriate for diseases that are curable, in contrast to acute leukemias. The resultant large sample sizes needed for each treatment restrict the trial to one or two new treatments, although historical reality suggests the difficulty in knowing, without clinical data, whether these are the best of several new treatments. The p value-based statistics discourage use of data from previous patients in the trial to inform treatment of subsequent patients, contravening patients' assumptions. Standard phase II trials focus on a single outcome, ignoring the complexity of medical practice, and ignore prognostic heterogeneity. Finally, although patients are more interested in whether a new treatment is better than another, rather than whether it is active, randomization between different treatments does not begin until phase II trials have been completed. This paper proposes alternatives based on the Bayesian statistical approach. The thesis that I will develop here is that commonly used clinical trial designs are unrealistic in the sense that they do not correspond well to patients' views of medical practice and greatly over-simplify such practice. By emphasizing Bayesian rather than p value-based statistics and focusing on acute myeloid leukemia, I hope to familiarize physicians with some of the many new published designs that address these problems.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D012107 Research Design A plan for collecting and utilizing data so that desired information can be obtained with sufficient precision or so that an hypothesis can be tested properly. Experimental Design,Data Adjustment,Data Reporting,Design, Experimental,Designs, Experimental,Error Sources,Experimental Designs,Matched Groups,Methodology, Research,Problem Formulation,Research Methodology,Research Proposal,Research Strategy,Research Technics,Research Techniques,Scoring Methods,Adjustment, Data,Adjustments, Data,Data Adjustments,Design, Research,Designs, Research,Error Source,Formulation, Problem,Formulations, Problem,Group, Matched,Groups, Matched,Matched Group,Method, Scoring,Methods, Scoring,Problem Formulations,Proposal, Research,Proposals, Research,Reporting, Data,Research Designs,Research Proposals,Research Strategies,Research Technic,Research Technique,Scoring Method,Source, Error,Sources, Error,Strategies, Research,Strategy, Research,Technic, Research,Technics, Research,Technique, Research,Techniques, Research
D002986 Clinical Trials as Topic Works about pre-planned studies of the safety, efficacy, or optimum dosage schedule (if appropriate) of one or more diagnostic, therapeutic, or prophylactic drugs, devices, or techniques selected according to predetermined criteria of eligibility and observed for predefined evidence of favorable and unfavorable effects. This concept includes clinical trials conducted both in the U.S. and in other countries. Clinical Trial as Topic
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D001499 Bayes Theorem A theorem in probability theory named for Thomas Bayes (1702-1761). In epidemiology, it is used to obtain the probability of disease in a group of people with some characteristic on the basis of the overall rate of that disease and of the likelihood of that characteristic in healthy and diseased individuals. The most familiar application is in clinical decision analysis where it is used for estimating the probability of a particular diagnosis given the appearance of some symptoms or test result. Bayesian Analysis,Bayesian Estimation,Bayesian Forecast,Bayesian Method,Bayesian Prediction,Analysis, Bayesian,Bayesian Approach,Approach, Bayesian,Approachs, Bayesian,Bayesian Approachs,Estimation, Bayesian,Forecast, Bayesian,Method, Bayesian,Prediction, Bayesian,Theorem, Bayes
D016032 Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic Works about clinical trials that involve at least one test treatment and one control treatment, concurrent enrollment and follow-up of the test- and control-treated groups, and in which the treatments to be administered are selected by a random process, such as the use of a random-numbers table. Clinical Trials, Randomized,Controlled Clinical Trials, Randomized,Trials, Randomized Clinical
D017326 Clinical Trials, Phase III as Topic Works about comparative studies to verify the effectiveness of diagnostic, therapeutic, or prophylactic drugs, devices, or techniques determined in phase II studies. During these trials, patients are monitored closely by physicians to identify any adverse reactions from long-term use. These studies are performed on groups of patients large enough to identify clinically significant responses and usually last about three years. This concept includes phase III studies conducted in both the U.S. and in other countries. Clinical Trials, Phase 3 as Topic,Drug Evaluation, FDA Phase 3 as Topic,Drug Evaluation, FDA Phase III as Topic,Evaluation Studies, FDA Phase 3 as Topic,Evaluation Studies, FDA Phase III as Topic

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