ArticleMedicine, health care, and philosophy2018
Patient-specific devices and population-level evidence: evaluating therapeutic interventions with inherent variation.
Article in Medicine, health care, and philosophy, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Legal issues and underexplored data protection in medical 3D printing: A scoping review.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2023Article
- Evidence for personalised medicine: mechanisms, correlation, and new kinds of black box.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2019Article
- A Systematic Scoping Review of Patient-specific Devices in Operative Management of Scaphoid Nonunion.JB & JS open accessReview
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Designing and manufacturing medical devices for specific patients is becoming increasingly feasible with developments in 3D printing and 3D imaging software. This raises the question of how patient-specific devices can be evaluated, since our 'gold standard' method for evaluation, the randomised controlled trial (RCT), requires that an intervention is standardised across a number of individuals in an experimental group. I distinguish several senses of patient-specific device, and focus the discussion on understanding the problem of variations between instances of an intervention for RCT evaluation. I argue that, despite initial appearances, it is theoretically possible to use RCTs to evaluate some patient-specific medical devices. However, the argument reveals significant difficulties for ensuring the validity of such trials, with implications for how we should think about methods of evidence gathering and regulatory approaches for these technologies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
29052083What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.