Artikel,

Meta-analyses of chronic disease trials with competing causes of death may yield biased odds ratios.

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Journal of clinical epidemiology, 61 (4): 365-72 (April 2008)4586<m:linebreak></m:linebreak>PUBM: Print-Electronic; JID: 8801383; 2006/05/23 received; 2007/05/08 revised; 2007/05/10 accepted; 2007/10/15 aheadofprint; ppublish;<m:linebreak></m:linebreak>Mesures d&#039;associació.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2007.05.009

Zusammenfassung

OBJECTIVE: To study the odds ratio (OR) as measure of treatment effect in the context of mutually exclusive causes of death. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: As example we consider meta-analyses of randomized trials of implantable cardioverter defibrillator implantation (ICD). We compare the pooled OR to the pooled cause-specific hazard ratio (HR) for each of the mutually exclusive outcomes "sudden cardiac death" (SCD) and "death other than SCD." RESULTS: The pooled OR and cause-specific HR for the reduction of SCD are similar (0.43 and 0.44, respectively) for nine included trials. However, the OR erroneously presumes a potential trend toward an adverse effect of the ICD on "death other than arrhythmia" (OR 1.11 0.84-1.45), whereas such an effect is small with the cause-specific HR (HR 1.03 0.79-1.32). In general, it is shown that a spurious association of treatment with öther death" may be seen when a substantial number of death from the cause of interest is postponed. CONCLUSION: The OR should be used with caution to study effects of treatment on mutually exclusive causes of death. Practically this concern applies primarily to meta-analysis where the use of the cause-specific HR, whenever available, is recommended.

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