The two-stage drop-the-loser design provides a framework for selecting the most promising of K experimental treatments in stage one, in order to test it against a control in a confirmatory analysis at stage two. The multistage drop-the-losers design is both a natural extension of the original two-stage design, and a special case of the more general framework of Stallard & Friede () (Stat. Med. ...

Approximately 75% of adults over the age of 65 years are affected by two or more chronic medical conditions. We provide a conceptual justification for individualized absolute risk calculators for competing patient-centered outcomes (PCO) (i.e. outcomes deemed important by patients) and patient reported outcomes (PRO) (i.e. outcomes patients report instead of physiologic test results). The absol...

BACKGROUND A plethora of clinical studies have assessed the benefits of implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) and supported their use in clinical practice. However, evidence on the safety and efficacy of ICDs appears insufficient to support expansion of their use in clinical practice, and more information on their impact in real life settings is warranted. This paper aims to investigat...

BACKGROUND Many MetS related biomarkers had been discovered, which provided the possibility for building the MetS prediction model. In this paper we aimed to develop a novel routine biomarker-based risk prediction model for MetS in urban Han Chinese population. METHODS Exploring Factor analysis (EFA) was firstly conducted in MetS positive 13,345 males and 3,212 females respectively for extrac...

OBJECTIVE To implement a customizable checklist in an interdisciplinary, team-based plastic surgery setting to reduce surgical complications. METHODS We examined the effects on patient outcomes and documentation of a customizable, office-based surgical safety checklist. On the basis of the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist, we developed a 28-element, perioperative checklist ...

Early stopping is a form of regularization based on choosing when to stop running an iterative algorithm. Focusing on non-parametric regression in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space, we analyze the early stopping strategy for a form of gradient-descent applied to the least-squares loss function. We propose a data-dependent stopping rule that does not involve hold-out or cross-validation data, a...

Most of the measures income inequality are derived from Lorenz curve, and many authors state that Gini index is best single measure inequality. The present paper reviews some theorical properties curve provides a nonparametric estimate almost sure convergence this estimate. And to confirm performance estimator, an application on real data was carried out.

This study analyzes the relationship between arsenic exposure through drinking water and bladder cancer mortality. The county-specific white male bladder cancer mortality data (1950-1979) and county-specific groundwater arsenic concentration data were obtained for 133 U.S. counties known to be exclusively dependent on groundwater for their public drinking water supply. No arsenic-related increa...

OBJECTIVE This study attempted to compare two models for selective (people at elevated risk) and indicated (those with subsyndromal depressive symptoms) prevention and to determine the optimal strategy for prevention of late-life depression. METHOD Onset was assessed at 3 years with the Geriatric Mental State AGECAT in a randomly selected cohort of 1,940 nondepressed and nondemented older peo...

over the credibility of the randomized screening mammography trials are red herrings. The overall results of the trials suggest that screening very likely reduces breast cancer mortality. Despite some peccadillos of the trials, I agree with the overall conclusion. I always have. So why have I been painted as being anti-screening? It is because I am less enthusiastic about the consequences of sc...