Question

Patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and requiring mechanical ventilation can develop fatal bacterial infections. A clinical trial randomly assigned 934 patients admitted to an ICU and requiring mechanical ventilation to two groups. The control group received a standard medical treatment, whereas the antibiotics group received antibiotics prophylactically in addition to the standard treatment. The study found that 107 of the 468 patients in the control group died, compared with 69 of the 466 patients in the antibiotics group. (a) What are the proportions of ICU patients who died in the two groups? Let ?̂ 1 represent the proportion of patients who died in the group which received antibiotics, and let ?̂ 2 represent the proportion of patients who died in the control group. (Enter your answer rounded to four decimal places.) (b) What is the relative risk (??) of dying in the antibiotics group when compared with that of the placebo group? (Enter your answer to the nearest whole percent.) (c) Calculate the odds ratio (??) for death, comparing ICU patients given the antibiotics prophylactically compared with those given only the standard treatment. Enter your answer in decimal form, rounded to three decimal places. Observe how it compares to the ?? calculated in part (b). (Enter your answer rounded to three decimal places.)

Answer 1