BMJ 1995;311:1229 (4 November)

Letters

Perception of risk is affected by presentation

EDITOR,--T Fahey and colleagues advise that informed clinical and health policy decisions should be made on the basis of full understanding of the limitations of the data presented, and they show how members of health authorities were influenced more by relative risk than by other presentations of the same data.1 This may apply to the general public too. If that is so, the public relations disaster of the Committee on Safety of Medicines' release of conclusions from unpublished data on the risk of thromboembolism with certain combined oral contraceptives might have been avoided if the data had been presented in a form showing the difference in the percentage of event free women (table).2 This would have alarmed women less and allowed a more measured determination of policy when the results of the relevant studies are published. 


Risk of venous thromboembolism with combined oral
contraceptives*
----------------------------------------------------------------------
                           Oral contraceptives           Other
                          containing gestodene       . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Evidence based purchasing: understanding results of clinical trials and systematic reviews
T Fahey, S Griffiths, and T J Peters
BMJ 1995 311: 1056-1059. [Abstract] [Full Text]

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