Clinical epidemiology
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The aim of the Danish Palliative Care Database (DPD) is to monitor, evaluate, and improve the clinical quality of specialized palliative care (SPC) (ie, the activity of hospital-based palliative care teams/departments and hospices) in Denmark. ⋯ DPD is a national clinical quality database for SPC having clinically relevant variables and high data and patient completeness.
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Clinical epidemiology · Jan 2015
Systematic reviews with language restrictions and no author contact have lower overall credibility: a methodology study.
High-quality systematic reviews (SRs) require rigorous approaches to identify, appraise, select, and synthesize research evidence relevant to a specific question. In this study, we evaluated the association between two steps in the conduct of an SR - restricting the search to English, and author contact for missing data - and the overall credibility of a SR. ⋯ Fewer than half of the SRs conducted to support the clinical practice guidelines we examined reported contacting study authors or searched non-English literature. SRs that did not conduct these two steps had lower quality scores, suggesting the importance of these two steps for overall SR credibility.
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Clinical epidemiology · Jan 2015
A simplified approach to the pooled analysis of calibration of clinical prediction rules for systematic reviews of validation studies.
Estimating calibration performance of clinical prediction rules (CPRs) in systematic reviews of validation studies is not possible when predicted values are neither published nor accessible or sufficient or no individual participant or patient data are available. Our aims were to describe a simplified approach for outcomes prediction and calibration assessment and evaluate its functionality and validity. ⋯ Our results have an immediate clinical implication in situations when predicted outcomes in CPR validation studies are lacking or deficient by describing how such predictions can be obtained by everyone using the derivation study alone, without any need for highly specialized knowledge or sophisticated statistics.
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Clinical epidemiology · Jan 2015
SpineData - a Danish clinical registry of people with chronic back pain.
Large-scale clinical registries are increasingly recognized as important resources for quality assurance and research to inform clinical decision-making and health policy. We established a clinical registry (SpineData) in a conservative care setting where more than 10,000 new cases of spinal pain are assessed each year. This paper describes the SpineData registry, summarizes the characteristics of its clinical population and data, and signals the availability of these data as a resource for collaborative research projects. ⋯ We described the aims, development, structure, and content of the SpineData registry, and what is known about any attrition bias and cluster effects in the data. For epidemiology research, these data can be linked, at an individual patient level, to the Danish population-based registries and the national spinal surgery registry. SpineData also has potential for the conduct of cohort multiple randomized controlled trials. Collaborations with other researchers are welcome.
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Clinical epidemiology · Jan 2015
The impact of preadmission oral bisphosphonate use on 30-day mortality following stroke: a population-based cohort study of 100,043 patients.
Bisphosphonate use has been associated with increased risk of fatal stroke. We examined the association between preadmission use of oral bisphosphonates and 30-day mortality following hospitalization for stroke. ⋯ We found no overall evidence that preadmission bisphosphonate use increases 30-day mortality following stroke.