Whitehead, John The design and analysis of sequential clinical trials. 2nd ed. (English) Zbl 0747.62109 The Ellis Horwood Series in Mathematics and its Applications. New York etc.: Ellis Horwood. 298 p. (1992). This book is directed mainly to medical statisticians. There are some mathematical derivations, for example the properties of the test statistics, but the topics are generally developed by example. The majority of the book describes sequential designs for discriminating between two treatments. These are obtained by using a frequentist approach and assuming equal numbers on each treatment between inspections of the data. The general approach, termed the boundary approach, includes group sequential up to fixed sample size designs and variable inspection times. It also allows a variety of response variables such as ordinal, binary and normal as well as survival data. Extension to more than two responses is discussed and alternative methods such as a Bayesian approach and repeated significance testing are described. Reference is made to the PEST 2 (Planning and Evaluation Sequential Trials) computer package, available from the author, which implements the designs. Some background is included on the planning of clinical trials, patient allocation and measurement of treatment difference. Details are given of several trials which have used the methodology. Reviewer: P.W.Jones (Keele) Cited in 15 Documents MSC: 62P10 Applications of statistics to biology and medical sciences; meta analysis 62-01 Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to statistics 62L05 Sequential statistical design 62L10 Sequential statistical analysis Keywords:sequential clinical trials; group sequential designs; ordinal responses; binary responses; normal responses; PEST 2 computer package; allocation schemes; measures of difference; measures of information; comparative survival studies; sequential probability ratio tests; triangular tests; partially sequential procedures; repeated significance tests; generalized linear models; Cox regression model; simulation; tables; frequentist approach; boundary approach; fixed sample size designs; variable inspection times; survival data; Bayesian approach; repeated significance testing; planning of clinical trials; patient allocation; measurement of treatment difference PDF BibTeX XML Cite \textit{J. Whitehead}, The design and analysis of sequential clinical trials. 2nd ed. New York etc.: Ellis Horwood (1992; Zbl 0747.62109)