In a clinical trial,sometimes patients agree to receive an intervention but later decide to stop taking the medication.Moreover,some patients who were assigned to placebo decide to stop taking the placebo pill and buy the drug on their own (even when they do not know that they are taking a placebo pill).When this happens,researchers typically do the analysis according to the original assignment of the treatment regardless of the actual treatment received.What is the name of this procedure to analyze the data?

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Regardless of the actual treatment that patients receive,researchers typically analyze the data respecting the original assignment of patients to the study arms.For example,a patient is assigned to receive treatment A (taking a pill daily),but he decides to stop taking such pill.When the analysis is done,this patient will be categorized into the treatment A group.This analysis is called intention-to-treat.

In a Clinical Trial,sometimes Patients Agree to Receive an Intervention