This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Pain  • Osteoarthritis  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In reply

The overenrollment in our trial¹ resulted from an unanticipated jump in patient randomization at several large research centers, just as we were nearing the 200-patient mark. Using the day we accrued the 200th patient as a cutoff, we have now identified the first 209 randomized patients. Analysis of their data confirmed the superiority of Pennsaid (a topical 1.5% [wt/wt] diclofenac sodium solution in a carrier containing dimethyl sulfoxide [Dimethaid Health Care Ltd, Markham, Ontario]) (pain, P<.001; physical function, P<.001; patient global assessment, P = .002; mean difference between groups for pain, 2.3).

The clinically significant difference of 2 is an estimate of a reasonable, anticipated difference between treatment groups, and we plugged this number into the standard power calculation equation to adequately explore our premise: the superiority of Pennsaid. It is not, however, a literature-derived "minimal clinically important improvement."

Contrary to the writers’ implication, the effect sizes . . . [Full Text of this Article]

AUTHOR INFORMATION
Sanford H. Roth, MD; J. Zev Shainhouse, MD

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

Efficacy and Relevance of Topical Diclofenac for Osteoarthritic Pain
Sita M. A. Bierma-Zeinstra, Janneke N. Belo, and Siep Thomas
Arch Intern Med. 2005;165(5):588-589.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT