Can the results be applied to my practice?
One must look critically at the patients and the treatment effect.
Would your patients have had the criteria to be admitted to the
study? You may ignore slight differences in criteria such as age, etc.
"Subgroup analysis" is when the authors further subdivide the patients after
study completion in order to demonstrate even greater statistically
significant results.
If subgroup analysis demonstrates a treatment effect, validity is dependant
on the size of the treatment effect, how unlikely it is to occur by chance,
whether it was specified in the original hypothesis, and whether it has
been replicated in other studies.
Application to Pollock et al's
thyroxine paper
In this study, it may be easy to see how these results can apply to
your practice. There was no subgroup analysis.
