ABSTRACT
Consider this situation wherein here are two drugs, Drug A and Drug B, both are intended to prevent heart attacks after a specific diagnosis, and assume for the moment that the heart attacks for this patient population always lead to death, while the actual risk of death is 2%–5% for the general population for first heart attack. Next consider the trial that estimated the two-year rate of heart attack at 60% for Drug A and 50% for Drug B, and the result was more than the minimal clinically important difference and was statistically significant. The study was well-powered, had generalizable patient selection, was well designed and well reported, and is generally considered as high-quality evidence. If you were a patient with the specific diagnosis, which drug would you choose? we would choose Drug A. If you know why we might even be considering choosing Drug A, you can skip this chapter. Otherwise, let’s work through an example.
