Comments on: Richard Lehman’s journal review – 23 April 2012

By: Richard Lehman

Richard Lehman — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:25:00 +0000

Sorry you were disappointed by getting Faraday instead of a plant Fiona. But I thought he was nice and entirely non-medical, and it gave me another chance to poke fun at The Lancet. Plants (or fungi) will reappear next week.

By: Dr Fiona Pathiraja

Dr Fiona Pathiraja — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:50:00 +0000

What happened to ‘plant of the week’ in this week’s blog?! I always look forward to a bit of non-medical learning in your blog. Fiona

By: Paddy

Paddy — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:19:00 +0000

Apologies – I should have prefixed that comment with “Based on the basic statistics alone…”

By: Paddy

Paddy — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:18:00 +0000

Re NEJM 1477 (bladder cancer): The advantage they found solid evidence for was in terms of disease-free survival, not overall survival. There was a definite trend to an effect for overall survival, but the statistical evidence was weak (p=0.16).

However, I’d say the data point strongly towards a real survival advantage, based on (1) the clear disease-free finding, and (2) the shape of the survival curves for overall survival, which is very consistent with the disease-free finding (half the patients in each arm died in the first 24 months, but after that many more patients died in the radiotherapy arm than the chemoradiotherapy arm).