Use of re-randomized data in meta-analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Outcomes collected in randomized clinical trials are observations of random variables that should be independent and identically distributed. However, in some trials, the patients are randomized more than once thus violating both of these assumptions. The probability of an event is not always the same when a patient is re-randomized; there is probably a non-zero covariance coming from observations on the same patient. This is of particular importance to the meta-analysts.

Methods

We developed a method to estimate the relative error in the risk differences with and without re-randomization of the patients. The relative error can be estimated by an expression depending on the percentage of the patients who were re-randomized, multipliers (how many times more likely

SUBMITTER: Hozo I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1145185 | biostudies-literature | 2005 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature