ArticleBMC medical research methodology2011
Imputation of missing values of tumour stage in population-based cancer registration.
Article in BMC medical research methodology, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
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- Prostate Cancer Survival by Risk and Other Prognostic Factors in Mallorca, Spain.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Cancer-specific survival by stage of bladder cancer and factors collected by Mallorca Cancer Registry associated to survival.BMC cancer · 2021Article
- Prevalence of Missing Data in the National Cancer Database and Association With Overall Survival.JAMA network open · 2021Article
- Socio-Economic Position, Cancer Incidence and Stage at Diagnosis: A Nationwide Cohort Study in Belgium.Cancers · 2021Article
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3 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMissing data on tumour stage information is a common problem in population-based cancer registries. Statistical analyses on the level of tumour stage may be biased, if no adequate method for handling of missing data is applied. In order to determine a useful way to treat missing data on tumour stage, we examined different imputation models for multiple imputation with chained equations for analysing the stage-specific numbers of cases of malignant melanoma and female breast cancer.
methodsThis analysis was based on the malignant melanoma data set and the female breast cancer data set of the cancer registry Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The cases with complete tumour stage information were extracted and their stage information partly removed according to a MAR missingness-pattern, resulting in five simulated data sets for each cancer entity. The missing tumour stage values were then treated with multiple imputation with chained equations, using polytomous regression, predictive mean matching, random forests and proportional sampling as imputation models. The estimated tumour stages, stage-specific numbers of cases and survival curves after multiple imputation were compared to the observed ones.
resultsThe amount of missing values for malignant melanoma was too high to estimate a reasonable number of cases for each UICC stage. However, multiple imputation of missing stage values led to stage-specific numbers of cases of T-stage for malignant melanoma as well as T- and UICC-stage for breast cancer close to the observed numbers of cases. The observed tumour stages on the individual level, the stage-specific numbers of cases and the observed survival curves were best met with polytomous regression or predictive mean matching but not with random forest or proportional sampling as imputation models.
conclusionsThis limited simulation study indicates that multiple imputation with chained equations is an appropriate technique for dealing with missing information on tumour stage in population-based cancer registries, if the amount of unstaged cases is on a reasonable level.
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