title: Comparing different strategies for timing of dialysis initiation through inverse probability weighting.
abstract: Dialysis has been used in the treatment of patients with end-stage renal disease since the 1960s. Recently, several large observational studies have been conducted to assess whether early initiation of dialysis prolongs survival, as compared with late initiation. However, these studies have used analytic approaches which are likely to suffer from either lead-time bias or immortal-time bias. In this paper, the authors demonstrate that recently developed methods in the causal inference literature can be used to avoid both types of bias and accurately estimate the ideal time for dialysis initiation from observational data. This is illustrated using data from a nationwide population-based cohort of patients with chronic kidney disease in Sweden (1996-2003).
authors: Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Nobels Väg 12, Stockholm, Sweden. arvid.sjolander@ki.se
authors: Arvid
authors: A
authors: Sjölander
authors: Olof
authors: O
authors: Nyrén
authors: Rino
authors: R
authors: Bellocco
authors: Marie
authors: M
authors: Evans
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D015982:Bias; D015992:Body Mass Index; D015897:Comorbidity; D005260:Female; D005919:Glomerular Filtration Rate; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007676:Kidney Failure, Chronic / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015233:Models, Statistical; D006435:Renal Dialysis / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012737:Sex Factors; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult