The progressive substitution of hazard ratios for relative risks in biomedical research

Paul Monsarrat () and Jean-Noel Vergnes
Additional contact information
Paul Monsarrat: Paul Sabatier University
Jean-Noel Vergnes: Paul Sabatier University

Scientometrics, 2019, vol. 119, issue 2, No 36, 1263-1267

Abstract: Abstract In biomedical research, epidemiological measures of risk/effect [effect sizes (ESs)] are predominantly derived from risk (or rate) ratios (RRs), odds ratios (ORs), or hazard ratios (HRs). Using the whole PubMed database, we detailed in this paper a phenomenon not yet described: a massive trend for HRs to be globally used as substitutes for RRs. All PubMed citations were bulk-downloaded and a data mining process led to a comprehensive database of 1,071,584 ES values. The proportion of abstracts containing only HR has exploded since the 2000s, while we observe an inverse trend for abstracts containing only RR. The annual number of abstracts with HR exceeded the number of abstracts with RR for 2006. The average annual growth rate of the number of abstracts with RR only and HR only between 1980 and 2017 was 15.1% and 32.6%, respectively. Training on HRs has become essential in the statistical education of physicians. Since the interpretation of HRs is slightly more difficult than that of ORs or RRs, it is also important to improve day-to-day communication with patients regarding this quite complex entity.

Keywords: Data mining; Risk; Epidemiology; Proportional hazards models; I10; I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-019-03059-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:119:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-019-03059-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-019-03059-2

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().