Question

A new drug treatment for cardiac thrombus claims to have a higher success rate than the current drug. A strong sign of the potential success is the lack of internal hemorrhaging starting 2 days after treatment. 168 patients who require treatment for cardiac thrombi are randomized after agreeing to participate in a trial of the new drug. The researchers were interested in whether the new drug reduced the need for blood transfusions due to internal hemorrhage compared to the current treatment. The following table summarizes the results of her study: What is the incidence of needing a blood transfusion in the group of persons who were randomized to the new drug treatment? Had Blood Transfusion Did Not have Blood Transfusion Death Rate in Hospital New Drug 43 41 0.250 Existing drug 26 58 0.083 Total 69 99 0.167 Select one: a. 31.0% b. 41.1% c. 51.2% d. 62.3% e. Incidence cannot be calculated with the information in this table

Answer 1

The question has been framed in a very confusing manner and it is very difficult to get the data perspective from it.

However intense observations leads us to the following observation table .

I shall base my answer on the references from the table above.

This is a simple problem related to finding

1. the incidence of needing a blood transfusion in the group of persons who were randomized to the new drug treatment

so lets start !

Here we need to know as to what is the total opportunities/chances/incidences wherein blood transfusion need was there from the group of people selected at random from the new drug treatment group.

now we can see that the total number of people selected for new blood transfusion drug observation is

=sum of people who has transfusion and who did not have transfusion.

Pepole from new drug group who had transfusion =43

People who had no transfusion =41

Thus total number of people in new drug group =43+41

=84

Of these , 43 had transfusion

These were the people who actually needed transfusion and had it .

Thus people need transfusion from new drug gropu =43

This when expressed in percentage terms with respect to the total number of people selected for new drug

=Total people needing transfusion from new drug group /Total people considered for new drug treatment study

=43/84 %

=51.2 %

Thus 51.2 % of the people selected at random for study of new drug treatment observation ,needed blood transfusion.

Hence option (C )