Completeness of Follow-Up Determines Validity of Study Findings: Results of a Prospective Repeated Measures Cohort Study

Regula S von Allmen, Salome Weiss, Hendrik T Tevaearai, Christoph Kuemmerli, Christian Tinner, Thierry P Carrel, Juerg Schmidli and Florian Dick

PLOS ONE, 2015, vol. 10, issue 10, 1-13

Abstract: Background: Current reporting guidelines do not call for standardised declaration of follow-up completeness, although study validity depends on the representativeness of measured outcomes. The Follow-Up Index (FUI) describes follow-up completeness at a given study end date as ratio between the investigated and the potential follow-up period. The association between FUI and the accuracy of survival-estimates was investigated. Methods: FUI and Kaplan-Meier estimates were calculated twice for 1207 consecutive patients undergoing aortic repair during an 11-year period: in a scenario A the population’s clinical routine follow-up data (available from a prospective registry) was analysed conventionally. For the control scenario B, an independent survey was completed at the predefined study end. To determine the relation between FUI and the accuracy of study findings, discrepancies between scenarios regarding FUI, follow-up duration and cumulative survival-estimates were evaluated using multivariate analyses. Results: Scenario A noted 89 deaths (7.4%) during a mean considered follow-up of 30±28months. Scenario B, although analysing the same study period, detected 304 deaths (25.2%, P

Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0140817

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0140817

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