Implication of inverse-probability weighting method in the evaluation of diagnostic test with verification bias / 中华流行病学杂志

ABSTRACT

To evaluate and adjust the verification bias existed in the screening or diagnostic tests.Inverse-probability weighting method was used to adjust the sensitivity and specificity of the diagnostic tests,with an example of cervical cancer screening used to introduce the Compare Tests package in R software which could be implemented.Sensitivity and specificity calculated from the traditional method and maximum likelihood estimation method were compared to the results from Inverse-probability weighting method in the random-sampled example.The true sensitivity and specificity of the HPV self-sampling test were 83.53％ (95％CI74.23-89.93) and 85.86％ (95％ CI84.23-87.36).In the analysis of data with randomly missing verification by gold standard,the sensitivity and specificity calculated by traditional method were 90.48％ (95％CI80.74-95.56) and 71.96％ (95％CI68.71-75.00),respectively.Thc adjusted sensitivity and specificity under the use of Inverse-probability weighting method were 82.25％ (95％ CI63.11-92.62) and 85.80％ (95％ CI85.09-86.47),respectively,whereas they were 80.13 ％ (95％ CI66.81-93.46) and 85.80％ (95％ CI84.20-87.41) under the maximum likelihood estimation method.The inverse-probability weighting method could effectively adjust the scnsitivity and specificity of a diagnostic test when verification bias existed,especially when complex sampling appeared.