Keeping Apples and Oranges Separate: Reassessing Clinical Trials That Use Composite End Points as Their Primary Outcome

Composite end points in clinical trials.

Composite endpoints are often used in clinical trials, especially in the cardiovascular area. Decreases in sample size requirements, ability to assess the net effect of an intervention and to avoid bias in presence of competing risk are the most cited advantages for their use. However, there is a risk of misinterpretation when heterogeneity among components with respect to either importance, nu...

Adding Apples and Oranges

We define a unit system for end-user spreadsheets that is based on the concrete notion of units instead of the abstract concept of types. Units are derived from header information given by spreadsheets. The unit system contains concepts, such as dependent units, multiple units, and unit generalization, that allow the classification of spreadsheet contents on a more fine-grained level than types...

Comparing apples and oranges ...

The most comprehensive and often-cited statistic about the U.S. economy is gross domestic product (GDP), the sum of all goods and services produced in the United States. Estimates of GDP are the featured statistics in the National Income and Product Accounts, the construction of which involves the collection and aggregation of an immense amount of data. In the construction of real GDP, complica...

Comparing apples and oranges.

Problems with use of composite end points in cardiovascular trials: systematic review of randomised controlled trials.

OBJECTIVE To explore the extent to which components of composite end points in randomised controlled trials vary in importance to patients, the frequency of events in the more and less important components, and the extent of variability in the relative risk reductions across components. DESIGN Systematic review of randomised controlled trials. DATA SOURCES Cardiovascular randomised controll...