Tag Archives: Research Design

Time to open the DOOR

Posted on 17 January 2024 by Keith Barrington

I have written many times about the problems with classical composite outcomes in neonatal research. “Death or BPD”, “death or NDI”, or sometimes “death or NEC or Sepsis or BPD or severe IVH” have been used as a way of … Continue reading →

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How to express negative results… or positive ones

Posted on 25 October 2023 by Keith Barrington

After any trial result, there is always a possibility that the true effect of an intervention is different to that shown in the sample who were studied. That is the whole rationale behind using statistics, a trial on a small … Continue reading →

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Composite outcomes for research; this is how to do it!

Posted on 21 March 2022 by Keith Barrington

As regular readers of the blog will know, I have been very critical of some very important, otherwise excellent, trials over one vital part of their design, that is, the use of composite outcomes such as “death or BPD”, “death … Continue reading →

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Should we feed insulin to preterm babies?

Posted on 8 March 2022 by Keith Barrington

This was an idea I had not heard about prior to seeing this newly published trial (Mank E, et al. Efficacy and Safety of Enteral Recombinant Human Insulin in Preterm Infants: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Pediatr. 2022). The introduction … Continue reading →

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Which is worse; death or a low Bayley score? Comparing composite outcomes between groups, taking into account clinical priorities.

Posted on 13 May 2021 by Keith Barrington

I keep harping on about this issue as I think we make a mistake in the design of our research studies when we include death and a much less important outcome in composite outcomes. For example in the STOP-BPD trial, … Continue reading →

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Longer term outcomes; what should we measure? part 1.

Posted on 22 April 2021 by Keith Barrington

Many important trials include follow-up to about 2 years in order to ascertain longer-term effects. Such as this one: Adams-Chapman I, et al. Neurodevelopmental outcome of preterm infants enrolled in myo-inositol randomized controlled trial. J Perinatol. 2021. Ira Adams-Chapman was … Continue reading →

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What respiratory outcomes are important?

Posted on 31 May 2019 by Keith Barrington

When bronchopulmonary dysplasia was first described by Northway in 1967 he didn’t try to produce a definition, his paper was a description of a small number of preterm survivors of high oxygen and positive pressure ventilation. He noted some years … Continue reading →

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Research Outcomes in Neonatology : must do better.

Posted on 24 May 2019 by Keith Barrington

When planning a research project with neonatal patients the first question should be, what am I investigating? The PICO outline : standing for Patients, Intervention, Controls (or comparison) and Outcome, is a standardized way of asking the simple question. If … Continue reading →

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To p or not to p, what is the alternative?

Posted on 3 April 2019 by Keith Barrington

I started writing the previous post several weeks ago, and, of course, the ideas are not original with me, in fact, a whole recent issue of “The American Statistician” is dedicated to not just trying to eliminate talk of statistical … Continue reading →

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To p or not to p, that is the question.

Posted on 1 April 2019 by Keith Barrington

I can’t claim preference for this title, although I wish I could. I copied it from an article published in an ENT journal (Buchinsky FJ, Chadha NK. To P or Not to P: Backing Bayesian Statistics. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. … Continue reading →

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