Zelen s Design

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Zelen's design is an experimental design for randomized clinical trials proposed by statistician Dr. Marvin Zelen. In this design, patients are randomized to either the treatment or control group before giving informed consent. Because the group to which a given patient is assigned is known, consent can be sought conditionally. In this design, those patients receiving standard care need not be consented for pariticipation in the study other than possibly for privacy issues. On the other hand, those patients randomized to the experimental group are consented as usual, except that they are consenting to the certainty of receiving the experimental treatment only; alternatively these patients can decline and receive the standard treatment instead.