Investigating the appropriateness of different concordance measures in a time-to-event setting.

PURPOSE: Prediction models that assess a patient's risk of an event are used to inform treatment options and confirm screening tests. The concordance (c) statistic is one measure to validate the accuracy of these models, but has many extensions when applied to censored data. The purpose was to determine which c-statistic is most accurate at different rates of censoring. METHODS: A simulation study was conducted for n = 750, and censoring rates of 20%, 50%, and 80%. The mean of three different concordance definitions were compared as well as the mean of three different c-statistics, including one, parametric c-statistic for exponentially distributed data, developed by the authors. The SE was also calculated but was of secondary interest. RESULTS: The c-statistic developed by the authors yielded the a mean closest to the gold standard concordance measure when censoring is present in data, even when the exponentially distributed parametric assumptions do not hold. Similar results were found for SE. CONCLUSIONS: The c-statistic developed by the authors appears to be the most robust to censored data. Thus, it is recommended to use this c-statistic to validate prediction models applied to censored data. This will improve the reliability and comparability across future time-to-event studies.

Methods to improve the estimation of time-to-event outcomes when data is de-identified.

Technological advancements in recent years have sparked the use of large databases for research. The availability of these large databases has administered a need for anonymization and de-identification techniques, prior to publishing the data. This de-identification alters the data, which in turn can impact the results derived post de-identification and potentially lead to false conclusions. The objective of this study is to investigate if alterations to a de-identified time-to-event data set may improve the accuracy of the estimates. In this data set, a missing time bias was present among censored patients as a means to preserve patient confidentiality. This study investigates five methods intended to reduce the bias of time-to-event estimates. A simulation study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of each method in reducing bias. In situations where there was a large number of censored patients, the results of the simulation showed that Method 4 yielded the most accurate estimates. This method adjusted the survival times of censored patients by adding a random uniform component such that the modified survival time would occur within the final year of the study. Alternatively, when there was only a small number of censored patients, the method that did not alter the de-identified data set (Method 1) provided the most accurate estimates.

Benford's Law for Quality Assurance of Manner of Death Counts in Small and Large Databases.

To assess if Benford's law, a mathematical law used for quality assurance in accounting, can be applied as a quality assurance measure for the manner of death determination. We examined a regional forensic pathology service's monthly manner of death counts (N = 2352) from 2011 to 2013, and provincial monthly and weekly death counts from 2009 to 2013 (N = 81,831). We tested whether each dataset's leading digit followed Benford's law via the chi-square test. For each database, we assessed whether number 1 was the most common leading digit. The manner of death counts first digit followed Benford's law in all the three datasets. Two of the three datasets had 1 as the most frequent leading digit. The manner of death data in this study showed qualities consistent with Benford's law. The law has potential as a quality assurance metric in the manner of death determination for both small and large databases.