Propensity score matching in randomized clinical trials.

ABSTRACT: Cluster randomization trials with relatively few clusters have been widely used in recent years for evaluation of health-care strategies. On average, randomized treatment assignment achieves balance in both known and unknown confounding factors between treatment groups, however, in practice investigators can only introduce a small amount of stratification and cannot balance on all the important variables simultaneously. The limitation arises especially when there are many confounding variables in small studies. Such is the case in the INSTINCT trial designed to investigate the effectiveness of an education program in enhancing the tPA use in stroke patients. In this article, we introduce a new randomization design, the balance match weighted (BMW) design, which applies the optimal matching

SUBMITTER: Xu Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3407414 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature