Clinical Trials in Endophthalmitis

Abstract

Clinical trials evaluate how well a new medical approach works in people. Each trial answers scientific questions and tries to find better ways to prevent, screen for, diagnose, or treat a disease. Clinical trials may also compare a new treatment to a treatment that is already available. Every clinical trial has a protocol for conducting the trial. The randomized clinical trial (RCT) is the most powerful trial to decide the benefit of one treatment over the other. It is often considered the gold standard. The great value of RCT lies in the act of randomizing patients to receive or not receive the intervention when all other possible causes are equal between the two groups so that any significant differences between the groups in the outcome event could be attributed to the intervention and not to some other unidentified factor. Many randomized controlled trials involve large sample size because many treatments have relatively small effects. Obtaining statistically significant differences between two samples is easy if large differences are expected. The randomization procedure gives the randomized controlled trial its strength. Random allocation means that all participants have the same chance of being assigned to each of the study groups.