Why caution is recommended with post-hoc individual patient matching for estimation of treatment effect in parallel-group randomized controlled trials: The case of acute stroke trials

Abstract

A post-hoc individual patient matching procedure was recently proposed within the context of parallel group randomized clinical trials (RCTs) as a method for estimating treatment effect. In this paper, we consider a post-hoc individual patient matching problem within a parallel group RCT as a multi-objective decision-making problem focussing on the trade-off between the quality of individual matches and the overall percentage of matching. Using acute stroke trials as a context, we utilize exact optimization and simulation techniques to investigate a complex relationship between the overall percentage of individual post-hoc matching, the size of the respective RCT, and the quality of matching..