The design and analysis of split-mouth studies: What statisticians and clinicians should know

• Published in: Statistics in medicine Vol. 28; no. 28; pp. 3470 - 3482
• Main Authors: Lesaffre, Emmanuel, Philstrom, Bruce, Needleman, Ian, Worthington, Helen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 10.12.2009; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Adolescent; Analysis; Anesthesia - methods; Child; Chlorhexidine - pharmacology; Data Interpretation, Statistical; Dental Care - methods; Dental Caries - prevention & control; dental clinical trials; Design; Drug Combinations; Estimates; Female; Humans; intra-subject comparisons; Male; Medical research; Medical statistics; oral health research; Pain - prevention & control; Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; Research Design; split-mouth design; Thymol - pharmacology

The split‐mouth design is a popular design in oral health research. In the most common split‐mouth study, each of two treatments are randomly assigned to either the right or left halves of the dentition. The attractiveness of the design is that it removes a lot of inter‐individual variability from t...