There was a higher physician preference for transdermal monotherapy.
Nonetheless, we do not have a complete sample of all physician preferences and it is possible that a physician may have a probability outside of this range.
The decision on which trial to use remains largely a matter of physician preference; however, an important underlying rule is 'DO NOT EXHAUST' [ 44].
A level of physician preference for the drug (higher or lower) was assigned based on preceding prescribing records of the care-providing physician.
To address this issue, we controlled for 2 factors likely to predict when a patient would receive ART, such as CD4 count and hospital of care (a surrogate for physician preference or resources).
In the longer term, however, unless a change in physician preference is achieved, the recommended drug would be discontinued early, and patients would be switched to a second-line drug.
In the early stages of the study, more patients stopped dual oral therapy in the rosiglitazone-containing arms than those on metformin plus sulfonylurea, which might have introduced a patient or physician preference bias given the open-label nature of the study.
That may be a result of decreased numbers of patients treated with a drug of higher physician preference and therefore decreased power to detect significant difference.
Despite having adjusted for confounding when we had relevant data, if there was a bias involving, say, physician preference, that changed over the three periods, it would remain.
To assess the effect of physician preference for a particular tumour necrosis factor α (TNF) antagonist on the risk of treatment discontinuation in rheumatoid arthritis.
