Journal
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CANCER
Volume 36, Issue 11, Pages 1351-1358Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/S0959-8049(00)00125-8
Keywords
randomised clinical trials; cancer clinical trials; meta-analysis; overview; systematic review; individual patient data; literature search; publication bias; selection bias; intergroup trials
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The results of individual phase III cancer clinical trials are often inconclusive due to the overly optimistic size of treatment differences that are sought. Increased power and precision can generally be obtained if the data from several different trials studying the same or similar questions are analysed together. Individual patient data meta-analyses, which combine together the quantitative results from all properly randomised studies, provide an overall estimate of the size of treatment differences. Individual patient data meta-analyses have played an especially important role in breast and gastrointestinal tract cancers where many important questions have been addressed. Although meta-analyses have been subject to considerable criticism, individual patient data meta-analyses provide the best overall evidence of treatment effect in the absence of large-scale trials and have been instrumental in providing objective data that can be used in the design of new studies. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available