ABSTRACT
Traditionally, clinical trials have been designed to evaluate a single treatment in a homogeneous group of patients. Such trials have proven useful for answering the following question: “Does a single treatment offer a benefit on average to a study population?” However, the answer to this question does not provide the physician with the necessary information to make decisions regarding the best treatment for an individual patient, especially when the patient may differ from patients in the study population and there are multiple treatment options to consider.
