• Results from clinical trials should be published in medical papers and not evaluated from selected information in press releases
• We still need a lot of information from the trials to be able to have a clear picture of the efficacy and safety of the Covid-19 vaccines, let alone the precision and clinical relevance of the findings
• The information presented in the press releases are not sufficient to make calculations on risk
• But here is what you can find if you do it anyway

 

GET THE ABSTRACT SCREENING TOOL

It can be a challenge to screen papers for clinical relevance. As we go beyond the abstract in this podcast, we have created a screening tool you can use when reading an abstract from a clinical research paper.

Using that tool enables you to quickly screen an abstract from a medical journal for clinical relevance selecting only those you want to read. At the same time, you will know why you skipped the rest. Get it at https://www.precision-evidence.com/tool

 LINKS:

 Table with estimates of how many people need to be vaccinated to prevent one case of covid-19 https://www.precision-evidence.com/blog/how-many-people-need-to-be-vaccinated-to-prevent-one-case-of-covid-19/

 Precision Evidence Matrix https://precision-evidence.com/matrix

 

NOTES:

 We only have limited information about the new Covid-19 vaccines released by press releases

• Unfortunately, there is a broad misunderstanding of how to interpret the efficacy measures and what they mean
• What is an efficacy value, and what can we learn from that?
• We only have the raw measures of efficacy without confidence intervals
• Efficacy versus efficiency and why it matters
• Based on data from the press releases, we cannot make a valid calculation of how many people need to be vaccinated to prevent one case of covid-19
• But we do it anyway…
• Estimating how many people need to be vaccinated to prevent one case of covid-19 based on the data we have (the Number Needed to Treat or NNT values)
• Are these values good?
• Finding clinical relevance and meaningfulness with using the Precision Evidence Matrix
• Press releases versus future medical papers
• What are we missing?
• Comparison between different vaccine trials
• We will follow up when the research papers are published

 

Contact us at email: [email protected],

Twitter @PrecisionEBM,

website: www.precision-evidence.com

Hosts:

Dr. Kim Kristiansen, M.D: @KKristiansenMD

JG Staal: @HealthyEvidence

 

Music thanks to mixkit.co