Topic 5 DQ 2 Clinically significant results
Topic 5 DQ 2 Clinically significant results
Clinically significant results are those that advance medical treatment and enhance a person’s physical function, mental health, and capacity for social interaction. The phrase “improving quality of life” in relation to medical care covers both subjective and objective concepts. Here, the terms “objective” and “subjective” improvements in quality of life are used to describe changes in performance status, the length of a disease’s remission, and the lengthening of life (Sharma, 2021). Subjective improvements in quality of life refer to changes in mood, attitude, physical and social activity, feeling generally well, and the relief of discomforting symptoms like pain, frailty, and distress.
Results with statistical significance do not always translate into therapeutic relevance or an improvement in the subjects’ quality of life. As a result, many outcomes may be statistically significant but not necessarily clinically relevant (Sharma, 2021). Hence, clinical and statistical significance should both be valued by researchers and doctors. A clinically relevant intervention justifies its effects by outweighing the costs, harm, and difficulties it causes to the people it is intended to help. The primary distinction between statistical and clinical significance is that the former looks for differences between two groups or two treatment modalities, whilst the latter asks whether the results of the carried-out analysis of the data have any mathematical significance (Armijo-Olivo, 2018). For instance, if a drug has a demonstrable, beneficial impact on a person’s daily activities, it may be said to have a high clinical significance. Statistical significance, in this case, would help determine whether the effects of the drug are real or due to chance. For the DPI project, the clinical significance is preferred because the aim is to develop an intervention that will have beneficial effects on the patients that outweigh the costs and inconveniences.
References
Armijo-Olivo S. (2018). The importance of determining the clinical significance of research results in physical therapy clinical research. Brazilian journal of physical therapy, 22(3), 175–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bjpt.2018.02.001
Sharma H. (2021). Statistical significance or clinical significance? A researcher’s dilemma for appropriate interpretation of research results. Saudi journal of anaesthesia, 15(4), 431–434. https://doi.org/10.4103/sja.sja_158_21
