An alternative approach, for example, may have been to interview a client, caregiver and clinician about the same instance of treatment decision making.
All but one of their 24 'infections' were cured and in the single instance of treatment failure, bacteria paid a substantial fitness cost, which means that, given a functioning immune system, the infection might have been cleared as well.
Nevertheless, the interviewees experienced various instances of treatment refusal, discrimination and racism.
Although we did not note any instances of treatment interruption, this might be due to the short follow up period: in a recent treatment interruption study done in South Africa the median time of interruption was 228 days [18].
Of the 1,004 HIV-negative participants in TBTC Study 22, there were 8 instances of treatment failure and 61 cases of relapse.
He had multiple instances of treatment for skin infections, beginning with a diagnosis of leprosy (Hansen disease, caused by the mycobacterium M. leprae) when he was 10 years of age.
The question enquiring about the use of alternative (folk) medicine practitioners did not refer to specific instances of treatment but rather 'usual use', and no specific time period was mentioned.
These data included time from MDM discussion to initiation of treatment, instances of treatment initiation before MDM discussion, clarity of documentation of MDM decision, number of case re-discussions, reasons for delay in discussion or decision making relating to pathology or radiology and the cost of the individual MDMs.
Although this study focused specifically on aflibercept and ranibizumab, it was necessary to track instances of treatment with pegaptanib or bevacizumab to appropriately determine that patients were indeed initiating first-line anti-VEGF therapy and to identify whether a patient had switched to a different anti-VEGF therapy after initiation.
In this instance, futility of treatment becomes an issue.
The difference in direction of point estimates between the studies appears largely attributable to the selection of studies and data rather than, for instance, choice of treatment effect measure (OR rather than RR) or any statistical adjustments applied by Regnier et al. [ 39].
