Many clinical outcomes, both primary and secondary, which I discussed two weeks ago, are not the desired outcomes, but markers of such—surrogate markers or biomarkers. The term “biomarker” comes from […]
Jeff Aronson’s Words
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Festschrift
While my contribution to this section of The BMJ was being published last week, I was in Manchester, at a festschrift for my colleague Brian Houston, marking his retirement, on […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Outcomes, primary and secondary
In my recent articles on how outcomes are assessed in clinical studies I have covered the minimal clinically important difference (MCID), a measure of how large a change in the […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Desmond Laurence’s Clinical Pharmacology
Desmond Laurence (1922–2019), one of the founders of UK clinical pharmacology, died this week. Others, better qualified than I am to do so, will write obituaries. But I should like […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Reported outcomes
In the last few weeks I have been discussing criteria that prescribers may consider in deciding whether to introduce a therapeutic intervention. They include: the minimal clinically important difference (MCID), […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Desirable benefits and acceptable harms
Reading about the idea of a minimal clinically important difference (MCID), I came across another term, less widely used: the patient acceptable symptom state or PASS. The earliest reference to […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Important differences
I have previously discussed the idea of a minimal clinically important difference (MCID), and in my last piece focused on the word “clinically”. I suggested that it implied activity at […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Clinical
Last week I discussed the idea of a minimal clinically important difference, introduced in the 1980s. It was later suggested that the term “clinically” should be omitted, implying as it […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Minimal clinically important difference
Six weeks ago I discussed minimalism, two weeks ago the meaninglessness of “meaningful”, and last week “clinically meaningful”, the last of which really means “clinically important”. Now all of this […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Medically meaningful
I suggested last week that “meaningful” more often means “meaningless” than any of the other possible meanings that it has acquired. As for the so-called “meaningful votes” in the House […]