Data in longitudinal randomised controlled trials in cancer pain: is there any loss of the information available in the data?

Data in longitudinal randomised controlled trials in cancer pain: is there any loss of the information available in the data? Results of a systematic literature review and guideline for reporting | BMC Cancer | Full Text

Background

According to the ESMO Guideline working group [1] over 80 % of cancer patients with advanced metastatic disease suffer from pain. A vast literature [2, 3, 4] reports the inadequacy of pain treatment among these patients despite numerous initiatives and recommendations [5, 6, 7, 8]. Therefore high quality trials assessing the efficacy of analgesic drugs and treatment strategies are required for this population of patients. Quality research includes optimally using all the data collected and analysing it an informative way i.e. using the statistical method which best reflects the effect of the intervention. Recently, it has been reported that there were numerous examples of waste in the running of clinical trials [9], non-optimal use of the data collected being one of them......