Skip Navigation


NDT Advance Access originally published online on October 31, 2007
Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation 2008 23(1):52-55; doi:10.1093/ndt/gfm712
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
23/1/52    most recent
gfm712v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (1)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Garg, A. X.
Right arrow Articles by Levin, N. W.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Garg, A. X.
Right arrow Articles by Levin, N. W.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of ERA-EDTA. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org


A well-conducted randomized trial that establishes no benefit of therapy is an important medical advance

Amit X. Garg1, Tom Greene and Nathan W. Levin2

1Associate Professor Medicine and Epidemiology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada and 2Medical and Research Director, Renal Research Institute, 207 East 94th Street, Suite 303, New York, NY 10128

Correspondence and offprint requests to: Nathan W. Levin, Room ELL-101 Kidney Clinical Research Unit London Health Sciences Centre 800 Commissioners Road East London, ON N6A 4G5 Tel: 519.685.8502; Fax: 519.685.8269; E-mail: nlevin@rriny.com

Keywords: randomized controlled trials; kidney diseases; dialysis; epidemiologic methods

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.



   Background
 
As physicians, we continually strive to understand disease processes and predict how they will affect our patients. However, our greatest skill lies in our ability to intervene and change the natural history of a disease, i.e. change a poor outcome which otherwise would have occurred. Many types of interventions are used in the care of renal patients, from pills, to procedures and dialysis, to alternative ways to deliver health care. All would agree that interventions need to be evaluated to determine if they are beneficial, without harm, and cost-effective in a system of finite resources.

A randomized, controlled clinical trial (RCT) is an experimental method used to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention. RCTs are conducted when an intervention shows the potential for health care improvement, but there is collective uncertainty as to the true benefits of the intervention [1]. This uncertainty is in fact essential to the . . . [Full Text of this Article]



   Assumptions for the argument
 


   Negative RCTs do influence theory and future research
 


   Negative RCTs do influence practice
 


   Conclusion
 

Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 pdiHome page
E. Vonesh
ON SMALL SOLUTE CLEARANCE AND PATIENT OUTCOMES: EVIDENTIAL PRACTICE OR OBSERVATIONAL TREPIDATION?
Perit. Dial. Int., November 1, 2009; 29(6): 623 - 629.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]