A Method of Assessing Efficacy with Small Patient Numbers

By: Helmut Kiene, M.D.
Original title: Eine Methode zur Wirksamkeitsbeurteilung bei kleinen Patientenzahlen. Der Merkurstab 1996; 49:277-9.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14271/DMS-16907-DE
English by A. R. Meuss, FIL, MTA.
This translation is published with the kind permission of the journal Der Merkurstab.

JAM Vol. 14(1), Spring 1997

The method presented in this paper will, in the author's opinion, serve to document clinical results when numbers are small. There is no need for controls, and documentation may also be retrospective.

Essentially the method bases on a criterion often used in everyday clinical practice - the ratio of times for which symptoms persisted before and after treatment. If the time for which symptoms persisted after starting treatment is relatively short compared to the time before treatment, this may be taken to indicate that the treatment was successful. Results are most impressive if the post-treatment period comes close to zero. This is the kind of "instant cure" known from neural therapy, for instance. But when symptoms have persisted for five years, for example, and have disappeared four weeks after starting treatment, this, too, is a powerful indication of efficacy.

Such an indication may actually gain power of evidence if a similar situation can be shown for several patients and if this is also the total number of patients who have had the treatment in question. (This is the crux of the matter. There must be no selection of successful cases!) A highly convincing documentation of the efficacy of a treatment would be the following (unselected) complete set of six case records.

Citation: Kiene, H. (1997). A Method of Assessing Efficacy with Small Patient Numbers (A. R. Meuss, Trans.). Journal of Anthroposophic Medicine, 14(1), 47–49.