However, observational studies published in reputable medical journals often give similar results to randomized controlled trials, according to an analysis by University of Iowa researchers. The investigation has implications for how medical treatments are evaluated for effectiveness. The findings were published in the June 22nd issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. In randomized controlled trials, clinicians randomly assign patients to receive one of two or more medical treatments and subsequently analyze the treatment results. In observational studies, patients are treated as usual by their physician, who decides the treatment course.
Researchers become involved post-treatment in analyzing the treatment data.
Our findings suggest that the results from observational studies should not necessarily be dismissed. We should take a closer look at how to integrate observational studies with other types of research. These data sets may provide an untapped resource for the evaluation of medical treatments. Hartz, who co-authored the study with Kjell Benson, a UI medical student who recently completed his second year, said they had accepted the conventional wisdom that these observational studies give different results than controlled trials and that they set out to investigate what types of observational studies were most likely to be valid. However, as they read research articles, they found that the observational results were surprisingly similar to the results from randomized controlled trials, and they began to pursue that similarity.