Stopping Randomized Trials Early for Benefit and Estimation of Treatment Effects: Systematic Review and Meta-regression Analysis, March 24/31, 2010, Bassler et al. 303 (12): 1180

Stopping Randomized Trials Early for Benefit and Estimation of Treatment Effects

Systematic Review and Meta-regression Analysis

Dirk Bassler, MD, MSc; Matthias Briel, MD, MSc; Victor M. Montori, MD, MSc; Melanie Lane, BA; Paul Glasziou, MBBS, PhD; Qi Zhou, PhD; Diane Heels-Ansdell, MSc; Stephen D. Walter, PhD; Gordon H. Guyatt, MD, MSc; and the STOPIT-2 Study Group

JAMA. 2010;303(12):1180-1187.

Context  Theory and simulation suggest that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) stopped early for benefit (truncated RCTs) systematically overestimate treatment effects for the outcome that precipitated early stopping.

Objective  To compare the treatment effect from truncated RCTs with that from meta-analyses of RCTs addressing the same question but not stopped early (nontruncated RCTs) and to explore factors associated with overestimates of effect.

Data Sources  Search of MEDLINE, EMBASE, Current Contents, and full-text journal content databases to identify truncated RCTs up to January 2007; search of MEDLINE, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects to identify systematic reviews from which individual RCTs were extracted up to January 2008.

Study Selection  Selected studies were RCTs reported as having stopped early for benefit and matching nontruncated RCTs from systematic reviews. Independent reviewers with medical content expertise, working blinded to trial results, judged the eligibility of the nontruncated RCTs based on their similarity to the truncated RCTs.

Data Extraction  Reviewers with methodological expertise conducted data extraction independently.

Results  The analysis included 91 truncated RCTs asking 63 different questions and 424 matching nontruncated RCTs. The pooled ratio of relative risks in truncated RCTs vs matching nontruncated RCTs was 0.71 (95% confidence interval, 0.65-0.77). This difference was independent of the presence of a statistical stopping rule and the methodological quality of the studies as assessed by allocation concealment and blinding. Large differences in treatment effect size between truncated and nontruncated RCTs (ratio of relative risks <0.75) occurred with truncated RCTs having fewer than 500 events. In 39 of the 63 questions (62%), the pooled effects of the nontruncated RCTs failed to demonstrate significant benefit.

Conclusions  Truncated RCTs were associated with greater effect sizes than RCTs not stopped early. This difference was independent of the presence of statistical stopping rules and was greatest in smaller studies.

Author Affiliations: Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (Drs Bassler, Briel, Zhou, Walter, and Guyatt and Ms Heels-Ansdell); Department of Neonatology, University Children's Hospital Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany (Dr Bassler); Basel Institute for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland (Dr Briel); Knowledge and Encounter Research Unit, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota (Dr Montori and Ms Lane); and Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Department of Primary Health Care, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK (Dr Glasziou).

via jama.ama-assn.org

JAMA March 24/31, 2010, Bassler et al. 303 (12): 1180

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