Is Randomised Clinical Trial Data Applicable to Clinical Practice?
By Candace Hoffmann Special to DG News BOCA RATON, FL — September 25, 2002 — Even the best randomized clinical trial (RCT) data may not be applicable to real-world everyday practice, especially in the treatment of advanced heart failure patients, a new study shows. The main drawback may be because most clinical trials are designed to test an individual drugs performance and not how to combine therapies, the researchers say. “Despite tremendous amounts of data from randomized clinical trials, there is much variability in the management of patients with advanced heart failure,” first author Dr. Monica R. Shah and her colleagues report. “To examine why standardizing care for this population is so challenging, we sought to identify the most common questions that arise in clinical practice and if there is data from randomized clinical trials to answer them.” The results of Dr. Shah’s research, conducted at Brigham and Womens Hospital at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts were rep
