Eliminating Ambiguous Treatment Effects Using Estimands.

ABSTRACT: Most reported treatment effects in medical research studies are ambiguously defined, which can lead to misinterpretation of study results. This is because most authors do not attempt to describe what the treatment effect represents, and instead require readers to deduce this based on the reported statistical methods. However, this approach is challenging, because many methods provide counterintuitive results. For example, some methods include data from all patients, yet the resulting treatment effect applies only to a subset of patients, whereas other methods will exclude certain patients while results will apply to everyone. Additionally, some analyses provide estimates pertaining to hypothetical settings in which patients never die or discontinue treatment. Herein we introduce estimands

SUBMITTER: Kahan BC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10236519 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature