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p3analyze

07/25/11 7:34 PM

#123896 RE: iwfal #123895

HR at the interim would have to be HR>=0.95 in order to trigger Futility

Good to see we are already 0.05 HR closer to each other. ;-) I will safely wager you the futility HR boundary will not be 1.0.

Nevertheless we can agree that while passing a futility hurdle doesn't mean the hazard ratio is great, it does say it's not on the wrong side of 1, ie harming patients. Even if it's not that much more informative, it at least limits the observed HR to below 1 be it 0.95 or 0.9. Then the non-termination for superiority then set the lower bound, somewhere at 0.71~0.72, per the OBF boundary. Without even knowing the exact the futility HR, it should be easy that we agree that if we let our simulator loose with an observed HR drawn from (0.71 to 1), the power of success at the second interim will be much higher than the 5% claimed by Martin, who essentially assumes the interim HR to be null. My question is how could he be so sure.

Now if I were to let personal bias, ie favorable view of cancer vaccine take hold, and believe regardless of the observed hazard ratio, that the true hazard ratio is as originally designed 0.6, or believing in some delayed treatment effect, which Martin fails to notice, then the power at the secodn interim will be even higher.












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exwannabe

07/25/11 8:03 PM

#123899 RE: iwfal #123895

ONTY: Clark or P3, do you guys know how the trial stop and patient "replacement" is being handled? The first SA article that started all this ad 2 different claims, and both seamed bogus to me.

Are you guys assuming that the extra patients are just to make up for the loss of power created by the known protocol violations, or are you also assuming that based on some rule patients have been removed from the ITT population? Also, were the peek points (and final N) adjusted?

On a related item, how many drop outs do you guys model at the trial stop?


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DewDiligence

07/25/11 10:42 PM

#123903 RE: iwfal #123895

But regardless of his intent, he is actually saying that it is NOT a null treatment - 5% chance of success does not happen with alpha=0.05 and a null treatment.

Did the SA author fail to distinguish between one-sided and two-sided testing?