ArticleCancers2021
Emulation of a Target Trial to Evaluate the Causal Effect of Palliative Care Consultation on the Survival Time of Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma.
Article in Cancers, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled 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.
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.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Reporting of Observational Studies Explicitly Aiming to Emulate Randomized Trials: A Systematic Review.JAMA network open · 2023Pooled it
- Target trial emulation studies in oncology: a comprehensive analysis.The oncologist · 2026Article
- From study design to executable code: automating target trial emulation with large language models.JAMIA open · 2026Article
- Evaluation of Time-related Bias With Non-user Control.Journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- De-Mystifying the Clone-Censor-Weight Method for Causal Research Using Observational Data: A Primer for Cancer Researchers.Cancer medicine · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Palliative care has the potential to improve the quality of life of patients with incurable diseases or cancer, such as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). A common misconception of palliative care with respect to the patient's survival remains a significant barrier to the discipline. This study aimed to provide causal evidence for the effect of palliative care consultation on the survival time after diagnosis among HCC patients. An emulation of a target trial was conducted on a retrospective cohort of HCC patients from January 2017 to August 2019. The primary endpoint was the restricted mean survival time (RMST) at 12 months after HCC diagnosis. We used the clone-censor-weight approach to account for potential immortal time bias. In this study, 86 patients with palliative care consultation and 71 patients without palliative care consultation were included. The adjusted RMST difference was -29.7 (95% confidence interval (CI): -81.7, 22.3;
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Registered trials
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.