In the era of systematic reviews, does the size of an individual trial still matter.
- Resource Type
- article
- Authors
- Gordon H Guyatt; Edward J Mills; Diana Elbourne
- Source
- PLoS Medicine, Vol 5, Iss 1, p e4 (2008)
- Subject
- Medicine
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 1549-1277
1549-1676
BACKGROUND TO THE DEBATE: Systematic reviews that combine high-quality evidence from several trials are now widely considered to be at the top of the hierarchy of clinical evidence. Given the primacy of systematic reviews-and the fact that individual clinical trials rarely provide definitive answers to a clinical research question-some commentators question whether the sample size calculation for an individual trial still matters. Others point out that small trials can still be potentially misleading.