title: An overview of group sequential methods in longitudinal clinical trials.
abstract: During the last decade, several papers have been published on group sequential methods in general and on sequential longitudinal clinical trials in particular. This paper gives an overview of the proposed methods, emphasizing longitudinal clinical trials. Furthermore, it tries to answer some practical questions that may arise during the conduct of interim analyses in longitudinal trials. Simulations have been carried out to obtain insight in these practical considerations.
authors.affiliation: Biostatistical Center, Catholic University of Leuven, U.Z. St. Rafaël, Kapucijnenvoer 35, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. bart.spiessens@med.kuleuven.ac.be
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Spiessens
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lesaffre
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Verbeke
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: DeMets
mesh_terms: D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D015233:Models, Statistical; D015203:Reproducibility of Results