Hi all,
I am doing an internal study to compare two surgical treatments (let's call them A & B). These are transplants, so there is a definite failure possibility (ie, the artery or vein to the transplant may clot, and the transplant thus "fails"). This is different from the outcome being measured and compared. Obviously, if the transplant fails, we expect the measured variable to perform poorly.
I used propensity score matching to compare outcomes from both groups. However, in group A there is 1 transplant failure. N is designed based on a priori power analysis. There are also no more patients in group A that I could try to find another patient via score matching for the comparison.
My question is, is it appropriate to keep the failure patient in the study? I generally think of ITT as it applies in RCTs, but would this be an example of ITT in a propensity matched study?
I do have an MS Statistician involved in this project, but wanted to reach out for more opinions because I have not encountered this situation before.
Thank you!
I am doing an internal study to compare two surgical treatments (let's call them A & B). These are transplants, so there is a definite failure possibility (ie, the artery or vein to the transplant may clot, and the transplant thus "fails"). This is different from the outcome being measured and compared. Obviously, if the transplant fails, we expect the measured variable to perform poorly.
I used propensity score matching to compare outcomes from both groups. However, in group A there is 1 transplant failure. N is designed based on a priori power analysis. There are also no more patients in group A that I could try to find another patient via score matching for the comparison.
My question is, is it appropriate to keep the failure patient in the study? I generally think of ITT as it applies in RCTs, but would this be an example of ITT in a propensity matched study?
I do have an MS Statistician involved in this project, but wanted to reach out for more opinions because I have not encountered this situation before.
Thank you!
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