It should be noted that while I won awards for my skills with English, Composition, and communications in college, I failed literally every single Math class I have ever taken. :lol:
I can barely add 1+1.
That said ... let me look at this and try to figure out what I did. The chart you're referring to on
http://www.hairlosstalk.com/productrevi ... /propecia/
Was apparently taken from the pictures provided by Merck with some percentages, which I got out of a leaflet that my dermatologist gave to me. This can be seen here:
http://www.hairlosstalk.com/productrevi ... ciapix.htm
It looks like I took the 5%, 31%, and 30% and that is how I came up with my number for "Improved". 66%.
But then we look at maintained... and somehow the Placebo group maintained twice as much as the Propecia group. That doesn't seem right even though that isn't part of your question!
I am still unable to figure out where I got the 33% from.
The confusion comes in also because there are actually *two* levels of evaluation going on. The first level is hair counts. That represents two factors: Improvement or Maintenance. More hairs = improvement. No change = Maintenance. The second level is Physician evaluation. This is the aesthetic review of the appearance of the hair. "Hmm, he looks better!" = Improved "Looks the same to me" = Maintained. Merck combined these.
They complicated things further by having *three* possible options
1. Improved as per haircount proof
2. Maintained as per haircount proof
3. Improved as per visual assessment by doctors standing 2 feet away.
As you can see on your page:
http://www.propecia.com/propecia/cns/about/studies.html
The first one is Haircount "Improved" or "Maintained".
The second is Visual assessment "Improved".
The third is Visual assessment "Maintained".
Confusing isnt it?
Each of those has a percentage attached to it, and each is different.
Its cool that Merck considered visual assessment valuable though. That shows that they realize this really is about what the guy see's in the mirror, not about what the hair counts say. At least when it comes to marketing!
However, if you're going to assess the success of a treatment, haircounts are the ONLY way to go, and they did these. So haircounts are what the official 83% is based upon.
I can't find the broken down version of that 83% but the 83% at the top of your Propecia page there represents Maintained or Regrew.
Definitely a typo on my part!
HairLossTalk.com
