[Healthcare Research into Anti-VEGF Therapy: Selection and Methodological Precautions].

[Healthcare Research into Anti-VEGF Therapy: Selection and Methodological Precautions]. Klin Monbl Augenheilkd. 2017 Aug 23;: Authors: Ziemssen F, Stahl A, Dimopoulos S Abstract Health care research has emerged as an approach to assess and improve quality of care and patient outcomes in the real world. It also has the potential to reduce healthcare costs by providing evidence to guide healthcare decisions.Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) theoretically offer the ideal study design to support treatment decisions. In RCTs, randomisation (formal chance) determines treatment allocation, which prevents selection bias from distorting the parameters of anti-VEGF treatment effects. Despite this advantage, only a minority of patients qualify for inclusion in neovascular age-related macular degeneration or diabetic macular oedema trials, which limits the validity of the results to the whole patient population seen in clinical practice. The evidence base for anti-VEGF is deficient in terms of matching the characteristics of patients encountered in clinical practice, and a more representative sample of older people and those with significant disability must be included in future trials. RCTs often do not address other knowledge gaps, including treatment delay, comparisons for less frequent types of CNV, monitoring of rare or late toxicity events or systemic safety.Observational studies, or studies in which treatment allocation occurs independe...
Source: Klinische Monatsblatter fur Augenheilkunde - Category: Opthalmology Tags: Klin Monbl Augenheilkd Source Type: research