- Results from clinical trials should be published in medical papers and not evaluated from selected information in press releases
- We still need a lot of information from the trials to be able to have a clear picture of the efficacy and safety of the Covid-19 vaccines, let alone the precision and clinical relevance of the findings
- The information presented in the press releases are not sufficient to make calculations on risk
- But here is what you can find if you do it anyway
GET THE ABSTRACT SCREENING TOOL
It can be a challenge to screen papers for clinical relevance. As we go beyond the abstract in this podcast, we have created a screening tool you can use when reading an abstract from a clinical research paper.
Using that tool enables you to quickly screen an abstract from a medical journal for clinical relevance selecting only those you want to read. At the same time, you will know why you skipped the rest. Get it at https://www.precision-evidence.com/tool
LINKS:
Table with estimates of how many people need to be vaccinated to prevent one case of covid-19 https://www.precision-evidence.com/blog/how-many-people-need-to-be-vaccinated-to-prevent-one-case-of-covid-19/
Precision Evidence Matrix https://precision-evidence.com/matrix
NOTES:
We only have limited information about the new Covid-19 vaccines released by press releases
- Unfortunately, there is a broad misunderstanding of how to interpret the efficacy measures and what they mean
- What is an efficacy value, and what can we learn from that?
- We only have the raw measures of efficacy without confidence intervals
- Efficacy versus efficiency and why it matters
- Based on data from the press releases, we cannot make a valid calculation of how many people need to be vaccinated to prevent one case of covid-19
- But we do it anyway…
- Estimating how many people need to be vaccinated to prevent one case of covid-19 based on the data we have (the Number Needed to Treat or NNT values)
- Are these values good?
- Finding clinical relevance and meaningfulness with using the Precision Evidence Matrix
- Press releases versus future medical papers
- What are we missing?
- Comparison between different vaccine trials
- We will follow up when the research papers are published
Contact us at email: [email protected],
Twitter @PrecisionEBM,
website: www.precision-evidence.com
Hosts:
Dr. Kim Kristiansen, M.D: @KKristiansenMD
JG Staal: @HealthyEvidence
Music thanks to mixkit.co



