2006 年 27 巻 Special_Issue 号 p. S45-S49
In any clinical trial or epidemiological study , missing data will occur. The problem in dealing with missing data are discussed from both clinical and statistical view points. Clinical approaches (e.g. LOCF) are easy to understand for physicians and are often appropriate for considering clinical background settings. But they seem to be less objective compared with statistical approaches , including multiple imputation based on “propensity score”. Further efforts should be made to bridge these two approaches in order to deal with missing data appropriately.