BMC research notes
-
Uganda just like any other Sub-Saharan African country, has a high under-five child mortality rate. To inform policy on intervention strategies, sound statistical methods are required to critically identify factors strongly associated with under-five child mortality rates. The Cox proportional hazards model has been a common choice in analysing data to understand factors strongly associated with high child mortality rates taking age as the time-to-event variable. However, due to its restrictive proportional hazards (PH) assumption, some covariates of interest which do not satisfy the assumption are often excluded in the analysis to avoid mis-specifying the model. Otherwise using covariates that clearly violate the assumption would mean invalid results. ⋯ Random survival forests are appealing methods in analysing public health data to understand factors strongly associated with under-five child mortality rates especially in the presence of covariates that violate the proportional hazards assumption.
-
Acquired Hemophilia A (AHA) is a rare hematological disorder that exhibits an incidence of approximately 1.5 cases per million patients a year. It is characterized by the development of autoantibodies against circulating Factor VIII coagulation proteins which, in turn, which in turn lead to potentially life-threatening hemorrhagic episodes. The incidence of AHA increases with age; with 80% of the affected patient population encompassing men and women that are 65 years or older. Some of the challenges that are highlighted in managing this disorder relate to the delayed diagnosis of this condition due to the rarity of the latter, the difficulty in establishing reliable hemostasis, and the secondary complications that are found when using immunosuppressive and hemostatic treatments in tandem with the elderly population afflicted with this disease. ⋯ Acquired Hemophilia A is an elusive bleeding disorder that has been seldom encountered in the demographics of Puerto Rico. The prompt detection of this diagnosis based on the clinical presentation alone is paramount to prevent the occurrence of grave hemorrhagic episodes. General knowledge and awareness of the treatment options available is key to ameliorate the prognosis of this ailment.