The challenges of stopping trials for benefit: A closer look at the immediate Kangeroo Mother Care trial
Dr. Lehana Thabane, Professor, Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact
The main objective of the talk is to discuss the challenges of stopping trials early for benefit. We will use the immediate Kangeroo Mother Care (iKMC) trial recently published in NEJM as an example to address the following issues:
- What are the ethical implications of not stopping early given the importance of adhering to the trial protocol?).
- How robust is the evidence from trials stopped early for benefit?
- When is it appropriate to stop trial early for benefit?
- Knowing that stopping early is associated with biases, how can we optimize our approach monitoring of trials to avoid this?
- How do we balance the ethics of stopping early vs the pursuit of scientific truth of getting it right?
- What are the scientific implications of stopping early?
macpedsrrt.ca 