Bmc Med Res Methodol
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Bmc Med Res Methodol · Mar 2020
Agreement of claims-based methods for identifying sepsis with clinical criteria in the REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) cohort.
Claims-based algorithms are commonly used to identify sepsis in health services research because the laboratory features required to define clinical criteria may not be available in administrative data. ⋯ Claims-based sepsis algorithms have high agreement and specificity but low sensitivity when compared with clinical criteria. Both claims-based algorithms identified a patient population with similar 90-day mortality rates as compared with classifications based on qSOFA and EHR criteria but higher mortality relative to SOFA criteria.
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Bmc Med Res Methodol · Feb 2020
Comparative StudyComparison of exclusion, imputation and modelling of missing binary outcome data in frequentist network meta-analysis.
Missing participant outcome data (MOD) are ubiquitous in systematic reviews with network meta-analysis (NMA) as they invade from the inclusion of clinical trials with reported participant losses. There are available strategies to address aggregate MOD, and in particular binary MOD, while considering the missing at random (MAR) assumption as a starting point. Little is known about their performance though regarding the meta-analytic parameters of a random-effects model for aggregate binary outcome data as obtained from trial-reports (i.e. the number of events and number of MOD out of the total randomised per arm). ⋯ The analysts should avoid applying strategies that manipulate MOD before analysis (i.e. exclusion and imputation) as they implicate the inferences negatively. Modelling MOD, on the other hand, via a pattern-mixture model to propagate the uncertainty about MAR assumption constitutes both conceptually and statistically proper strategy to address MOD in a systematic review.
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Bmc Med Res Methodol · Feb 2020
ReviewA scoping review of core outcome sets and their 'mapping' onto real-world data using prostate cancer as a case study.
A Core Outcomes Set (COS) is an agreed minimum set of outcomes that should be reported in all clinical studies related to a specific condition. Using prostate cancer as a case study, we identified, summarized, and critically appraised published COS development studies and assessed the degree of overlap between them and selected real-world data (RWD) sources. ⋯ This scoping review identified few COS development studies in prostate cancer, some quite dated and with a growing level of methodological quality over time. This study revealed promising overlap between COS and RWD sources, though with important limitations; linking established, national patient registries to administrative data provide the best means to additionally capture patient-reported and some clinical outcomes over time. Thus, increasing the combination of different data sources and the interoperability of systems to follow larger patient groups in RWD is required.
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Bmc Med Res Methodol · Feb 2020
Randomized Controlled TrialThe methods and baseline characteristics of a VA randomized controlled study evaluating supported employment provided in primary care patient aligned care teams.
This article describes the design and baseline sample of a single-site trial comparing Individual Placement and Support (IPS) supported employment delivered within a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) primary care Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) to treatment-as-usual vocational rehabilitation (TAU-VR) that includes transitional work. ⋯ Unique design features include evaluating the efficacy of evidenced-based IPS within the primary care setting, having broad diagnostic eligibility, and defining the primary outcome criterion as "steady employment", i.e. holding a competitive job for ≥26 weeks of the 12-month follow-up period. The findings illustrate the characteristics of a primary care veteran sample in need of employment services.
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Bmc Med Res Methodol · Feb 2020
Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in evidence synthesis: how the PatMed study approached embedding audience responses into the expression of a meta-ethnography.
Patient and public involvement (PPI) has become enshrined as an important pillar of health services empirical research, including PPI roles during stages of research development and analysis and co-design approaches. Whilst user participation has been central to qualitative evidence synthesis (QES) for decades, as seen in the Cochrane consumer network and guidelines, meta-ethnography has been slow to incorporate user participation and published examples of this occurring within meta-ethnography are sparse. In this paper, drawing upon our own experience of conducting a meta-ethnography, we focus on what it means in practice to 'express a synthesis' (stage 7). We suggest the methodological importance of 'expression' in Noblit and Hare's seven stage process (Noblit, GW and Hare, RD. Meta-ethnography: synthesizing qualitative studies, 1988) has been overlooked, and in particular, opportunities for PPI user participation within it. ⋯ The paper aims to complement recent attempts in the literature to refine and improve guidance on conducting a meta-ethnography, highlighting opportunities for PPI user participation in the processes of interpretation, translation and expression. We discuss the implications of user participation in meta-ethnography on ideas of 'generalisability'.