World Spirometry Day: intention to test should be intention to treat [Editorial]

Intention-to-treat principle.

Intention-to-Treat Comparison of Clinical Outcomes

Background Nonthoracotomy-implantable cardioverter/defibrillator (ICD) systems may represent a significant advance in the treatment of patients with life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias, but their merits relative to those of the wellestablished thoracotomy systems remain largely unknown. The objective of this study was to compare the shortand long-term clinical outcomes after attempted ICD ...

Intention-to-treat. What is the question?

It has become commonplace for Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) to be analyzed according to Intention-to-Treat (ITT) principles in which data from all subjects are used regardless of the subjects' adherence to protocol. While ITT analyses can provide useful information in some cases, they do not answer the question that motivates many RCTs, namely, whether the treatments differ in efficacy. I...

The role of intention-to-treat analyses in randomized trials.

To the Editor—Fritz et al recently examined 4 different approaches to eradicating Staphylococcus aureus carriage among patients with community-onset skin and soft-tissue infections (SSTIs). The increasing incidence of SSTIs—especially in the context of community-associated methicillin-resistant S. aureus—and the relative paucity of data on this subject make this an important investigation. The ...

Understanding the Intention-to-treat Principle in Randomized Controlled Trials

Clinicians, institutions, and policy makers use results from randomized controlled trials to make decisions regarding therapeutic interventions for their patients and populations. Knowing the effect the intervention has on patients in clinical trials is critical for making both individual patient as well as population-based decisions. However, patients in clinical trials do not always adhere to...