LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Response to letter to the editor
Abrahão Elias Hallack NetoI; Sheila Aparecida Coelho SiqueiraII; Frederico Luiz DulleyIII; Alfredo ChauobahIV; Marcelo BelessoV; Rosaura SaboiaV; Milton Artur RuizV; Dalton Alencar Fischer ChamoneVI; Juliana PereiraV
IMD, PhD. Adjunct professor, Department of Internal Medicine, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil
IIMD, PhD. Attending physician, Department of Pathological Anatomy, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP), São Paulo, Brazil
IIIMD, PhD. Associate professor, Department of Hematology, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP), São Paulo, Brazil
IVMD, PhD. Associate professor, Department of Statistics, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil
VMD. Attending physician, Department of Hematology, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP), São Paulo, Brazil
VIMD, PhD. Titular professor, Department of Hematology, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP), São Paulo, Brazil
Address for correspondence Address for correspondence: Abrahão Elias Hallack Neto Av. Dr. Enéas de Carvalho Aguiar, 155 - 1º andar - sala 61 Cerqueira César São Paulo (SP) - Brasil CEP 05403-000 Tel. (+55 11) 3061-5544 Fax. (+55 32) 3215-1523 Cel. (+55 32) 9112-6692 E-mail: abrahallack@uol.com.br
To the Editor
We would like to thank you very much for your attention to and comments on our trial published in issue 128(1) of this journal. As we ourselves acknowledged in the last paragraph of the discussion, the retrospective design of this trial and the small number of patients should be seen as questionable features and, therefore, our results need to be confirmed in a prospective study with more patients. However, despite the low statistical power of retrospective studies, the most important point is that such studies should be performed in order to raise questions and hypotheses for which proof may subsequently be obtained in trials with greater statistical power, in the way provided by prospective controlled trials.
Concerning the observation about the absence of risk classification from the analysis, we would like to clarify that, as described in the Methods section, all the patients enrolled in our trial were classified as intermediate-high and high risk according to the International Prognostic Index (IPI).
Date of first submission: June 30, 2010
Last received: June 30, 2010
Accepted: November 3, 2010
Sources of funding: None
Conflict of interest: None
Hospital das Clínicas, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (HC-FMUSP), São Paulo, Brazil
Address for correspondence:
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
10 Mar 2011 -
Date of issue
Jan 2011