Guidance for a causal comparative effectiveness analysis emulating a target trial based on big real world evidence: when to start statin treatment
Publication: Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research
Abstract
Aim: The aim of this project is to describe a causal (counterfactual) approach for analyzing when to start statin treatment to prevent cardiovascular disease using real-world evidence. Methods: We use directed acyclic graphs to operationalize and visualize the causal research question considering selection bias, potential time-independent and time-dependent confounding. We provide a study protocol following the ‘target trial’ approach and describe the data structure needed for the causal assessment. Conclusion: The study protocol can be applied to real-world data, in general. However, the structure and quality of the database play an essential role for the validity of the results, and database-specific potential for bias needs to be explicitly considered.
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Pages: 1013 - 1025
PubMed: 31512926
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© 2019 Future Medicine Ltd.
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Received: 1 October 2018
Accepted: 5 July 2019
Published online: 12 September 2019
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Guidance for a causal comparative effectiveness analysis emulating a target trial based on big real world evidence: when to start statin treatment. (2019) Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research. DOI: 10.2217/cer-2018-0103
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