During both contacts, participants were encouraged to ask for clarifications on any issue concerning the study individually.
Regrettably three major issues concerning the included studies; 1) small study size, 2) clinical heterogeneity and 3) poor methodological design, restrained us to present a comprehensive statistical analysis with pooled data. 1) Small study size: 9 out of the 17 included studies included < 20 patients [ 17- 19, 25, 28, 29, 34, 35].
Before the onset of the study, ethical issues concerning the design of the study were considered.
In Switzerland, monthly reports will be prepared by the principal investigator and sent to all GPs to inform about the number of patients recruited and important issues concerning the conduction of the study.
Focusing on sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Sp), this article addresses some issues concerning the precision of estimates, study costs, as well as the acceptability/convenience to subjects.
A few other issues concerning the interpretation of our study need to be discussed.
Two key issues concerning the design of such studies must be addressed in order to facilitate further progress.
Once we've sorted out the ethical issues concerning the archival material in this study, our pathology sub committee, chaired by Prof. Mitch Dowsett, will begin work on the microarrays to allow us to search for predictive factors of response.
Critical issues concerning the conduct and interpretability of DNT study data include experience in the handling and logistics of large number of animals, historical control data, lack of scientific data of certain developing processes and uncertainties concerning the choice of the best methodical approaches.
However, a recent study raised issues concerning the use of meta-analyses in determining a link between insulin analogues and cancer 103.
