[M T]

Given two alternatives for a baseball player, of the same gender, height, weight, race, smoking, gambling, etc, I'd bet the one the manager puts in as the designated batter is more likely to get a hit than the one that the manager didn't include on the team.

The doctors weren't choosing which patients to put on the medication randomly.  Trying to go back and balance things out seems to presume that the doctors were just look at the equivalent of the back of a baseball card to decide who should get what treatment.   I believe in doctors much more than that.

I did go back to the report and found the per-drug-combination controls in the appendix.  Not perfect alignments, but much better and close enough.   I withdraw my concern about the control group being distorted based on the listed parameters.


Then I looked at outcomes.  (I don't know what the "Outcome" line is under "Outcomes".  Is that Mechanical Ventilation or Mortality?  Why is that line blank on some treatments?) 

Those in the test groups (ie, taking some of the drugs) seem to have WAY worse outcomes (roughly 1.5x ICU days, 2x number on ventilators, 1.5x to 2x mortality).

I understand why arrythmia is much worse (increasing from under 0.5% to 6-8%) as anticipated.  But would a doctor believe these drugs somehow resulted in a requirement for more mechanical ventilation?  Is that likely to be an effect of the drug, or an effect of the doctors putting the sicker patients on the drugs?   

If the study's authors really believe in their methodology, why is their finding a wimpy "associated with decreased in-hospital survival" rather than a stronger statement?

[To clarify, my questions are not being put to any one to offer an answer. They are expressions of lack of understanding of why the authors wrote what they did.]

[M T]

Given two alternatives for a baseball player, of the same gender, height, weight, race, smoking, gambling, etc, I'd bet the one the manager puts in as the designated batter is more likely to get a hit than the one that the manager didn't include on the team.

The doctors weren't choosing which patients to put on the medication randomly.  Trying to go back and balance things out seems to presume that the doctors were just look at the equivalent of the back of a baseball card to decide who should get what treatment.   I believe in doctors much more than that.

I did go back to the report and found the per-drug-combination controls in the appendix.  Not perfect alignments, but much better and close enough.   I withdraw my concern about the control group being distorted based on the listed parameters.


Then I looked at outcomes.  (I don't know what the "Outcome" line is under "Outcomes".  Is that Mechanical Ventilation or Mortality?  Why is that line blank on some treatments?) 

Those in the test groups (ie, taking some of the drugs) seem to have WAY worse outcomes (roughly 1.5x ICU days, 2x number on ventilators, 1.5x to 2x mortality).

I understand why arrythmia is much worse (increasing from under 0.5% to 6-8%) as anticipated.  But would a doctor believe these drugs somehow resulted in a requirement for more mechanical ventilation?  Is that likely to be an effect of the drug, or an effect of the doctors putting the sicker patients on the drugs?   

If the study's authors really believe in their methodology, why is their finding a wimpy "associated with decreased in-hospital survival" rather than a stronger statement?

[To clarify, my questions are not being put to any one to offer an answer. They are expressions of lack of understanding of why the authors wrote what they did.]