hazard ratio is the most under-discussed thing on this board
hazard ratio is the most under-discussed thing on this board — a position I have arrived at slowly and would like tested.
Relative risk reduction without the baseline rate is uninterpretable. A large relative reduction on a small absolute risk is a small absolute benefit.
Spent an evening with the appendix tables and found the subgroup detail that the entire thread had been speculating about.
Discontinuation rates are a tolerability result. A trial with a strong efficacy number and heavy discontinuation is telling you two things and people only quote one.
Happy to answer the boring questions. Those are usually the ones worth asking.
best — the order this archive was captured in
The registered protocol is public. Comparing the registered primary endpoint with the reported one is a two-minute check and it is how outcome switching gets caught.
intention to treat versus completers changes the number substantially
Is that intention-to-treat or completers?
Is that intention-to-treat or completers?
Adding the check nobody runs — the registered protocol is public and takes two minutes to compare.
Yes — the interval is the finding. A point estimate with a wide interval is a hypothesis in a nice font.
Small fix — that was the cardiovascular outcomes trial, so weight was a secondary endpoint and the population was different.
registry entry, protocol, publication — three different documents
Push back: an open-label extension tells you about the people who stayed. That is a different question.
What was the discontinuation rate?
FLOW was kidney outcomes and it is the one nobody quotes
How to read one of these papers in fifteen minutes, in the order that actually helps.
Start with the registered protocol and check the primary endpoint against what is reported. Then the methods: who was included, what the comparator was, how long the randomised phase ran. Then the discontinuation numbers, which are a tolerability result and are usually in a supplementary table.
Only then the efficacy figure, and read the interval rather than the point estimate. Finish with the limitations section, which is where the authors say what they actually think.
Fifteen minutes, and you will know more than any thread summarising it.
Retitled: the original quoted a diabetes endpoint as an obesity result.
the confidence interval is the finding, the point estimate is the headline
Open-label extensions lose their randomisation. Anybody still enrolled at week 104 is a selected group and the numbers describe that group.
Absolute or relative risk reduction?
A confidence interval is the range of effects compatible with the data. Two trials with overlapping intervals have not disagreed, whatever their point estimates look like next to each other.
Intention-to-treat analyses everybody randomised regardless of what they did afterwards. Completer analyses only those who finished. The second is systematically more flattering and both are legitimate if labelled.
- 1Is that intention-to-treat or completers?9 comments in this branch · started by u/marit_laurent