The Pulmonary Metastasectomy in Colorectal Cancer (PulMiCC) burden of care study: Analysis of local treatments for lung metastases and systemic chemotherapy in 220 patients in the PulMiCC cohort.

Aim: The aim of this work was to examine the burden of further treatments in patients with colorectal cancer following a decision about lung metastasectomy.

Method: Five teams participating in the Pulmonary Metastasectomy in Colorectal Cancer (PulMiCC) study provided details on subsequent local treatments for lung metastases, including the use of chemotherapy. For patients in three groups (no metastasectomy, one metastasectomy or multiple local interventions), baseline factors and selection criteria for additional treatments were examined.

Pulmonary Metastasectomy versus Continued Active Monitoring in Colorectal Cancer (PulMiCC): a multicentre randomised clinical trial.

Background: Lung metastasectomy in the treatment of advanced colorectal cancer has been widely adopted without good evidence of survival or palliative benefit. We aimed to test its effectiveness in a randomised controlled trial (RCT).

Methods: Multidisciplinary teams in 13 hospitals recruited participants with potentially resectable lung metastases to a multicentre, two-arm RCT comparing active monitoring with or without metastasectomy.

Patterns of peripheral joint involvement in psoriatic arthritis-Symmetric, ray and/or row?

Objective: We sought to examine whether joint involvement in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) follows a symmetric, ray, and/or row pattern using longitudinal data.

Methods: Data on activity and clinical damage of the joints of the hands and feet were obtained from a PsA cohort. For each analysis (symmetry, ray or row) for each outcome (joint damage and activity) expected values for table cells under the null hypothesis that joints progress independently to damage or activity were calculated based on a logistic regression model with patient level random effects for the probability of involvement developing between clinic visits.

Major Greenwood (1880-1949): the biography.

Background is provided on the discovery of an unpublished biography of Major Greenwood written by one of his sons. The motivation and preparation for online publication of the biography in Statistics in Medicine are outlined. © 2016 The Authors.

Major Greenwood (1880-1949): a biographical and bibliographical study.

Major Greenwood was the foremost medical statistician of the first half of the 20th century in the U.K. Trained in both medicine and statistics, his career extended over 45 years during which he published eight books, 23 extensive reports and over 200 papers.

Tumour necrosis factor inhibitors versus combination intensive therapy with conventional disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs in established rheumatoid arthritis: TACIT non-inferiority randomised controlled trial.

Objective: To determine whether intensive combinations of synthetic disease modifying drugs can achieve similar clinical benefits at lower costs to high cost biologics such as tumour necrosis factor inhibitors in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis resistant to initial methotrexate and other synthetic disease modifying drugs.

Design: Open label pragmatic randomised multicentre two arm non-inferiority trial over 12 months.

Setting: 24 rheumatology clinics in England.

Randomised controlled trial of tumour necrosis factor inhibitors against combination intensive therapy with conventional disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs in established rheumatoid arthritis: the TACIT trial and associated systematic reviews.

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is initially treated with methotrexate and other disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Active RA patients who fail such treatments can receive tumour necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFis), which are effective but expensive.

Objective: We assessed whether or not combination DMARDs (cDMARDs) give equivalent clinical benefits at lower costs in RA patients eligible for TNFis.

Factors associated with damage accrual in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: results from the Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics (SLICC) Inception Cohort.

Background And Aims: We studied damage accrual and factors determining development and progression of damage in an international cohort of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients.

Methods: The Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics (SLICC) Inception Cohort recruited patients within 15 months of developing four or more 1997 American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria for SLE; the SLICC/ACR damage index (SDI) was measured annually. We assessed relative rates of transition using maximum likelihood estimation in a multistate model.

Major Greenwood's early career and the first departments of medical statistics.

Major Greenwood was the foremost medical statistician of the first half of the 20th century in the UK and is often credited with founding the first department of medical statistics at the Lister Institute in London in 1910. Here, we examine in detail his career prior to this appointment, including his association with Karl Pearson. We also examine the remit of the Department of Medical Statistics at the London Hospital of which he was the founding Director in 1908, some 2 years earlier than his appointment at the Lister Institute.

Commentary: Dr John Brownlee MA, MD, DSc, DPH (Cantab), FRFPS, FSS, FRMetS (1868-1927), public health officer, geneticist, epidemiologist and medical statistician.

In July 1914 Dr John Brownlee was appointed head of the Statistical Department of the newly established Medical Research Committee. He had qualified in mathematics, natural philosophy and medicine at the University of Glasgow, and by 1914 had established a reputation as a public health officer, an expert in infectious diseases, and as a proponent of the Pearsonian school of the application of statistics and mathematics to medicine: an ideal background for his new position. In celebration of the centenary anniversary of the Medical Research Council and as a tribute to John Brownlee's involvement at the start, the International Journal of Epidemiology is reprinting in this issue one of his early papers on genetics.

Hilda Mary Woods MBE, DSc, LRAM, FSS (1892-1971): reflections on a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

We have previously described the content of a text by Woods and Russell, An Introduction to Medical Statistics, compared it with Principles of Medical Statistics by Hill and set both volumes against the background of vital statistics up until 1937. The two books mark a watershed in the history of medical statistics. Very little has been recorded about the life and career of the first author of the earlier textbook, who was a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society for at least 25 years, an omission which we can now rectify with this paper.

Two-stage meta-analysis of survival data from individual participants using percentile ratios.

Methods for individual participant data meta-analysis of survival outcomes commonly focus on the hazard ratio as a measure of treatment effect. Recently, Siannis et al. (2010, Statistics in Medicine 29:3030-3045) proposed the use of percentile ratios as an alternative to hazard ratios.

Pulmonary metastasectomy in colorectal cancer: the PulMiCC trial.

PulMiCC (Pulmonary Metastasectomy in Colorectal Cancer) is a randomised controlled trial funded by Cancer Research UK. Patients with a history of resected colorectal cancer who are found to have pulmonary metastases are first registered for evaluation and, if subsequently eligible for the trial, they are invited to be randomly allocated to 'active monitoring' or 'active monitoring with pulmonary metastasectomy'. The clinical outcomes are overall survival, relapse-free survival, lung function and patient-reported quality of life.

Assessment of joint symmetry in arthritis.

We evaluate three methods for the assessment of symmetry in the joints affected by an arthritic disease. The first two methods, based on published methodology, are limited by their assumptions. We introduce a third method that enables a more comprehensive investigation.

A semi-competing risks model for data with interval-censoring and informative observation: an application to the MRC cognitive function and ageing study.

Semi-competing risks data occur frequently in medical research when interest is in simultaneous modelling of two or more processes, one of which may censor the others. We consider the analysis of semi-competing risks data in the presence of interval-censoring and informative loss-to-followup. The work is motivated by a data set from the MRC UK Cognitive Function and Ageing Study, which we use to model two processes, cognitive impairment and death.

Woods and Russell, Hill, and the emergence of medical statistics.

In 1937, Austin Bradford Hill wrote Principles of Medical Statistics (Lancet: London, 1937) that became renowned throughout the world and is widely associated with the birth of modern medical statistics. Some 6 years earlier Hilda Mary Woods and William Thomas Russell, colleagues of Hill at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, wrote a similar book An Introduction to Medical Statistics (PS King and Son: London, 1931) that is little known today. We trace the origins of these two books from the foundations of early demography and vital statistics, and make a detailed examination of some of their chapters.