Beautiful small: Misleading large randomized controlled trials? The example of colloids for volume resuscitation

Journal of Anaesthesiology, Clinical Pharmacology
Christian J Wiedermann, Wolfgang Wiedermann

Abstract

In anesthesia and intensive care, treatment benefits that were claimed on the basis of small or modest-sized trials have repeatedly failed to be confirmed in large randomized controlled trials. A well-designed small trial in a homogeneous patient population with high event rates could yield conclusive results; however, patient populations in anesthesia and intensive care are typically heterogeneous because of comorbidities. The size of the anticipated effects of therapeutic interventions is generally low in relation to relevant endpoints. For regulatory purposes, trials are required to demonstrate efficacy in clinically important endpoints, and therefore must be large because clinically important study endpoints such as death, sepsis, or pneumonia are dichotomous and infrequently occur. The rarer endpoint events occur in the study population; that is, the lower the signal-to-noise ratio, the larger the trials must be to prevent random events from being overemphasized. In addition to trial design, sample size determination on the basis of event rates, clinically meaningful risk ratio reductions and actual patient numbers studied are among the most important characteristics when interpreting study results. Trial size is a critica...Continue Reading

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