Strategy for randomised clinical trials in rare cancers

摘要

Treatments for rare cancers are difficult to evaluate in randomised trials as there are too few patients to detect any genuine treatment differences Combination of previous data with trial data by bayesian techniques could help overcome this problem Data from related studies are scored and weighted according to pertinence, validity, and precision The method of combining data increases the robustness of information from small trials and can be used to help design and provide justification for such trials.