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Determining sample size in a personalized randomized controlled (PRACTical) trial

Turner, Rebecca M; Lee, Kim May; Walker, A Sarah; Ellis, Sally; Sharland, Michael; Bielicki, Julia A; Stöhr, Wolfgang; (2024) Determining sample size in a personalized randomized controlled (PRACTical) trial. Statistics in Medicine 10.1002/sim.10168. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

In clinical settings with no commonly accepted standard-of-care, multiple treatment regimens are potentially useful, but some treatments may not be appropriate for some patients. A personalized randomized controlled trial (PRACTical) design has been proposed for this setting. For a network of treatments, each patient is randomized only among treatments which are appropriate for them. The aim is to produce treatment rankings that can inform clinical decisions about treatment choices for individual patients. Here we propose methods for determining sample size in a PRACTical design, since standard power-based methods are not applicable. We derive a sample size by evaluating information gained from trials of varying sizes. For a binary outcome, we quantify how many adverse outcomes would be prevented by choosing the top-ranked treatment for each patient based on trial results rather than choosing a random treatment from the appropriate personalized randomization list. In simulations, we evaluate three performance measures: mean reduction in adverse outcomes using sample information, proportion of simulated patients for whom the top-ranked treatment performed as well or almost as well as the best appropriate treatment, and proportion of simulated trials in which the top-ranked treatment performed better than a randomly chosen treatment. We apply the methods to a trial evaluating eight different combination antibiotic regimens for neonatal sepsis (NeoSep1), in which a PRACTical design addresses varying patterns of antibiotic choice based on disease characteristics and resistance. Our proposed approach produces results that are more relevant to complex decision making by clinicians and policy makers.

Type: Article
Title: Determining sample size in a personalized randomized controlled (PRACTical) trial
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1002/sim.10168
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/sim.10168
Language: English
Additional information: © 2024 The Author(s). Statistics in Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: clinical trials, multiple treatments, personalized randomization, sample size, trial design
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Inst of Clinical Trials and Methodology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Inst of Clinical Trials and Methodology > MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10194478
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