Evidence map›Paper›PMID 21127321›Full record

ArticleMedical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making

Bayesian calibration of a natural history model with application to a population model for colorectal cancer.

Sophie Whyte, Cathal Walsh, Jim Chilcott

Abstract read
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In one paragraph

Article in Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
27citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
2.3field-weighted citation impact, top 12% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 66 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Simulation modeling validity and utility in colorectal cancer screening delivery: A systematic review.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2020
    Pooled it
  2. Article
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  4. Modeling the Impact of Multicancer Early Detection Tests: A Review of Natural History of Disease Models.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2025
    Review
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  12. Review
  13. Cellular and molecular bioengineering · 2021
    Article
  14. Multiobjective Calibration of Disease Simulation Models Using Gaussian Processes.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2019
    Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Improving early diagnosis of symptomatic cancer.Nature reviews. Clinical oncology · 2016
    Review
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.

Sophie WhyteSchool of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK (SW, JC)
Cathal WalshDepartment of Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland (CW)
Jim ChilcottSchool of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK (SW, JC)
National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics · IESt. James's Hospital · IEUniversity of Sheffield · GB

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundCancer natural history models are essential when evaluating screening/preventative interventions or changes to diagnostic pathways. Natural history models commonly use a state transition structure, but it is often not possible to observe the state transition probabilities required for parameterization.

aim. The work aimed to accurately represent the uncertainty in the parameters of a state transition model for the natural history of colorectal cancer by embedding the problem in the framework of Bayesian inference.

methodsThe Metropolis-Hastings algorithm was used to estimate natural history parameters and screening test characteristics by generating multiple sets of parameters from the posterior distribution, which is the probability distribution that is compatible with the observed data. Observed data included colorectal cancer incidence categorized by age and stage, autopsy data on polyp prevalence, and cancer and polyp detection rates from the first round of screening with the fecal occult blood test in England. The approach was implemented using Visual Basic.

resultsThe results were subsequently examined for convergence using the package CODA in R 2.8.0. Outputs from fitting were samples from the joint posterior distribution of the natural history parameters given the epidemiological data. The parameter sets obtained are shown to have a good fit to all the observed data sets. These parameter sets are used when running probabilistic sensitivity analysis.

conclusionThe advantages of this strategy are that it draws efficiently from a high-dimensional correlated parameter space. The algorithm is simple to code and runs overnight on a standard desktop PC. Using this method, the parameter sets are drawn according to their posterior probability given calibration data, and thus they correctly summarize the residual uncertainty in the parameter space.

Indexed as

Bayes TheoremAgedCalibrationColorectal NeoplasmsCost-Benefit AnalysisHumansMarkov ChainsPrevalenceProbability

Identifiers

PMID21127321
OpenAlexW2168787488

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.