Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về hóa học được đăng trên tạp chí sinh học đề tài : Interpreting the results of patient reported outcome measures in clinical trials: The clinician's perspective | BioMed Central Health and Quality of Life Outcomes Commentary Open Access Interpreting the results of patient reported outcome measures in clinical trials The clinician s perspective Holger J Schunemann 1 3 Elie AAkl2 and Gordon H Guyatt3 4 Address 1Division of Clinical Research Development and INFORMAtion Translation Department of Epidemiology Istituto Regina Elena Italian National Cancer Institute Rome Rome Italy 2Department of Medicine University at Buffalo New York Buffalo USA 3Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics McMaster University Hamilton Ontario Canada and 4Department of Medicine McMaster University Hamilton Ontario Canada Email Holger J Schunemann - schuneh@ Elie A Akl - elieakl@ Gordon H Guyatt - Guyatt@ Corresponding author Published 14 September 2006 Received 02 August 2006 . J .. I IOZ IZ-7-7 -zrir A A- Accepted 14 September 2006 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2006 4 62 doi l477-7525-4-62 This article is available from http content 4 l 62 2006 Schunemann et al licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http licenses by which permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract This article deals with the problem of interpreting health-related quality of life HRQL outcomes in clinical trials. First we will briefly describe how dichotomization and item response theory can facilitate interpretation. Based on examples from the medical literature for the interpretation of HRQL scores we will show that dichotomies may help clinicians understand information provided by HRQL instruments in RCTs. They can choose thresholds to calculate proportions of patients benefiting based on absolute scores or change scores. For example clinicians interpreting clinical trial results could .
