Are the treatments practical in your setting?

This is the thirty-third blog in a series of 36 blogs explaining 36 key concepts we need to be able to understand to think critically about treatment claims.

Are the treatments practical in your setting? Be aware that treatments available to you may be sufficiently different from those in the research studies that the results may not apply to you.

Subgroup analyses may be misleading

This is the twenty-fourth blog in a series of 36 blogs explaining 36 key concepts we need to be able to understand to think critically about treatment claims.

Comparisons of treatments often report results for selected groups of participants in an effort to assess whether the effect of a treatment is different for different types of people (e.g. men and women or different age groups). These analyses are often poorly planned and reported. Most differential effects suggested by these “subgroup results” are likely to be due to the play of chance and are unlikely to reflect true differences.

All should be followed up

This is the nineteenth blog in a series of 36 blogs explaining 36 key concepts we need to be able to understand to think critically about treatment claims.

People in treatment comparisons who are not followed up to the end of the study may have worse outcomes than those who are followed up. For example, they may have dropped out because the treatment was not working or because of side effects. If those people are excluded, the findings of the study may be misleading.

Earlier is not necessarily better

This is the ninth in a series of 34 blogs explaining 34 key concepts we need to be able to understand to think critically about treatment claims.

This blog explains that people often assume that early detection of disease leads to better outcomes. However screening tests can be inaccurate (e.g. misclassifying people who do not have disease as having disease). Screening can also cause harm by labelling people as being sick when they are not and because of side effects of the tests and treatments.

More is not necessarily better

This is the eighth in a series of 34 blogs explaining 34 key concepts we need to be able to understand to think critically about treatment claims.

This blog explains that increasing the dose or amount of a treatment (e.g. how many vitamin pills you take) often increases harms without increasing beneficial effects. If a treatment is believed to be beneficial, we should not assume that more of it is better.

Allocation concealment: the key to effective randomisation

This blog explains what allocation concealment is & why it’s important, in terms of preventing researchers from (intentionally or otherwise) influencing which participants are assigned to a given intervention group.