Assessing diagnostic reliability and estimating incidence rates associated with a strictly progressive disease: dental caries.
This paper presents a general approach for simultaneously assessing, from serial data, diagnostic consistency, interrater reliability and incidence of a strictly progressive disease. Observed data are viewed as incomplete: diagnostic errors are not distinguished from true diagnoses. We introduce a broad class of models to separate rater errors from underlying patterns of disease incidence. The analysis can include covariates and risk factors. We provide variance expressions for parameter estimates. Categorical data for estimating the incidence of dental caries serve as an example.
Espeland
M A
MA
Center for Prevention Research and Biometry, Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103.
Murphy
W C
WC
Leverett
D H
DH
D003731:Dental Caries / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D003951:Diagnostic Errors; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012307:Risk Factors; D013223:Statistics as Topic