Letter to the Editor regarding the article: "identifying pre-hospital factors associated with outcome for major trauma patients in a regional trauma network: an exploratory study"

Charlie A Sewalt; Eveline J A Wiegers; Esmee Venema; Hester F Lingsma

doi:10.1186/s13049-017-0454-1

Letter to the Editor regarding the article: "identifying pre-hospital factors associated with outcome for major trauma patients in a regional trauma network: an exploratory study"

Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med. 2017 Nov 25;25(1):113. doi: 10.1186/s13049-017-0454-1.

Authors

Charlie A Sewalt¹, Eveline J A Wiegers², Esmee Venema², Hester F Lingsma²

Affiliations

¹ Center for Medical Decision Making, Department of Public Health, Erasmus University Medical Center, P.O. Box 2040, 3000, CA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. c.sewalt@erasmusmc.nl.
² Center for Medical Decision Making, Department of Public Health, Erasmus University Medical Center, P.O. Box 2040, 3000, CA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Abstract

The aim of this Letter to the Editor was to report some methodological shortcomings in a recently published article. Issues regarding missing values and overfitting are mentioned. First, Complete Case (CC) analysis was used instead of an imputation method. Second, there was a high chance of overfitting and lack of model validation. In conclusion, the results of this study should be interpret with caution and further research is necessary.

Keywords: Methodology; Prediction modelling; Predictive factors.

Publication types

Letter
Comment

MeSH terms

Hospitals*
Humans