Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[Investor2014]

This bit is not 101 of medical stats.

Ponder this simple question - if a patient unfortunately died during any study, would it be valid to include their pre- intervention data in your analysis if you did not have their post- analysis data? Well, of course the answer is “no”, unless death itself was a primary outcome measure.

Understanding the Intention-to-treat Principle in Randomized Controlled Trials

Intention-to-treat analysis is a method for analyzing results in a prospective randomized study where all participants who are randomized are included in the statistical analysis and analyzed according to the group they were originally assigned, regardless of what treatment (if any) they received. This method allows the investigator (or consumer of the medical literature) to draw accurate (unbiased) conclusions regarding the effectiveness of an intervention. This method preserves the benefits of randomization, which cannot be assumed when using other methods of analysis.

The rest of the article may be helpful to as it uses a variant of your example.