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| Year : 2016 | Volume
: 64
| Issue : 3 | Page : 591-592 |
Development and implementation of acute stroke care pathway in a tertiary care hospital in India: A cluster-randomized study
Kameshwar Prasad
Department of Neurology, Neurosciences Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India
| Date of Web Publication | 3-May-2016 |
Correspondence Address:
Kameshwar Prasad
Department of Neurology, Neurosciences Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/0028-3886.181570
How to cite this article:
Prasad K. Development and implementation of acute stroke care pathway in a tertiary care hospital in India: A cluster-randomized study. Neurol India 2016;64:591-2 |
Sir,
In the article published by our group in March-April issue of Neurology India,[1] the term 'cluster randomized' is not appropriate as wards (forming the 'clusters') were not allocated the intervention by a random process. In fact, patients were allocated to the wards on alternate days or on days administratively decided. The appropriate term to describe the process would be 'quasi-randomized'. Randomization of clusters is useful only if there are several clusters. In our study, there were only two clusters (in the form of wards) and therefore, no purpose could be achieved by randomly allocating the interventions to the wards. The purpose of random allocation is to achieve, on average, baseline similarity between the groups in terms of prognostic factors. If only two units (clusters) are available for randomization, they would remain as different or similar as they were before the randomization. Therefore, cluster randomization was not considered useful in this study.
We, therefore, would like to state that the study was 'quasi-randomized', rather than 'cluster-randomized'.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
| » References | |  |
| 1. | Rai N, Prasad K, Bhatia R, Vibha D, Singh MB, Rai VK, et al. Development and implementation of acute stroke care pathway in a tertiary care hospital in India: A cluster-randomized study. Neurol India 2016;64 Suppl:S39-S45.  |
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