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Age and Ageing Advance Access originally published online on June 24, 2006
Age and Ageing 2006 35(5):544-545; doi:10.1093/ageing/afl060
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Using dietetic assistants to improve the outcome of hip fracture

SIR—Duncan et al. examined how improved attention to nutritional status and dietary intake, achieved through the employment of dietetic assistants, affected postoperative clinical outcomes among elderly women with hip fracture [1]. Participants were randomised either to receive the conventional pattern of nurse- and dietician-led care or to receive the additional personal attention of the dietetic assistants. The randomisation sequence was generated using blocked randomisation with a block size of 10 and was concealed using sequentially numbered, opaque and sealed envelopes. When blocked randomisation is used, it ensures that approximately equal numbers of participants are allocated to each of the treatments. If a constant block size is used and the randomisation sequence is not stratified, then the number of participants allocated to the two groups should only differ by a maximum of half the block size. In this study, 318 women agreed to participate, and 153 of them were allocated to dietetic assistant care, and 165 were allocated to conventional care. This is an unexpected finding, given the block size. The maximum numerical imbalance that one would anticipate in a trial using a block size of 10 would be five, but here there is a difference of 12. Can the investigator explain why the unexpected discrepancy between the methods used to generate the randomisation sequence and the number of participants allocated to the two treatments arose?

Catherine E. Hewitt and David J. Torgerson*

York Trials Unit, Department of Health Sciences, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK

* To whom correspondence should be addressed Tel: (+44) 01904 321340 Fax: (+44) 01904 321383 Email: djt6{at}york.ac.uk

References

  1. Duncan D, Beck SJ, Hood K, Johansen A. Using dietetic assistants to improve the outcome of hip fracture: a randomised controlled trial of nutritional support in an acute trauma ward. Age Ageing 2006; 35: 148–153.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

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This Article
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
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35/5/544-a    most recent
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