November 27, 2023

Statistical Significance Versus Clinical Relevance

This study investigated how often statistically significant results in nuclear medicine clinical trials actually translate into clinically meaningful differences for individual patients. The authors analyzed 32 test results reported as statistically significant and found that the cutoff between normal and abnormal values averaged just 0.66 standard deviations from the mean. This means that for a typical statistically significant result, a third of normal patients would be misclassified as abnormal using that cutoff. The implication is that statistical significance frequently fails to ensure clinical relevance on an individual level. More caution is warranted in interpreting the clinical impact of statistically significant findings.

Citation: Heston TF, Wahl RL. How often are statistically significant results clinically relevant? Not often. J Nucl Med. 2009;50(Suppl 2):1370. https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10198933