Going Beyond Individual Trials To Compare Drugs

Main Category: Clinical Trials / Drug Trials
Article Date: 28 Apr 2009 - 5:00 PDT

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In many disease areas patients are now fortunate enough to be faced with multiple treatment options.

However, clinical trials often only tell us how individual treatments perform compared to placebo or one alternative treatment. This raises the question 'How do we choose between treatments that have not been compared in a clinical trial?'.

A recent study published in Value in Health addresses this problem for non-small cell lung cancer treatments. The study was conducted by researchers at Oxford Outcomes Ltd. UK and by Prof. Nick Thatcher, Christie Hospital, UK.

The study looks at further treatment options for patients that failed their first therapy. Erlotinib and docetaxel have both demonstrated efficacy in this setting - but no clinical trial has compared them directly.

To overcome this challenge, the researchers used statistical methods to combine data from a range of trials conducted in this area. The results provide a best estimate - given current data - of how erlotinib and docetaxel might compare if a head-to-head trial were conducted.

Dr. Neil Hawkins, lead researcher on the study said, "Clinicians and other health care decision makers must choose between treatments based on often incomplete data."

"Recent methodological advancements have provided statistical methods designed to make best use of the available data to inform decision making. Our study illustrates the practical utility of these methods and underlines the care required in their application."

This will be discussed in Value in Health, the official journal of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and outcomes Research.

Value in Health (ISSN 1098-3015) publishes papers, concepts, and ideas that advance the field of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research and help health care leaders to make decisions that are solidly evidence-based. The journal is published bi-monthly and has a regular readership of over 4,000 clinicians, decision-makers, and researchers worldwide.

ISPOR is a nonprofit, international organization that strives to translate pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research into practice to ensure that society allocates scarce health care resources wisely, fairly, and efficiently.

Source
ISPOR