Single Arm Trials presented by Anna McGlothlin
Release Date: October 29, 2018
Single arm studies are used to conserve resources and facilitate enrollment, particularly in rare diseases, where the available number of participants is limited. Potential participants, often reticent to be assigned placebo, are more likely to enroll when guaranteed access to a novel therapy. Without a control, single arm trials immediately save 50% of the required patient resources compared to a standard randomized controlled trial. While simple in concept, single arm trials pose challenges in interpretation and generalization, particularly due the uncertainty about how the control arm might have behaved. In this short video Dr. Anna McGlothlin will discuss these trade offs and introduce possible innovative alternatives to single arm studies, such as statistical borrowing of historical information in a randomized study.
