The Impact of Palliative Care Team Consultation on Quality of Life of Patients with Advanced Cancer in Dutch Hospitals: An Observational Study.

Introduction: Experimental studies have shown that palliative care team (PCT) involvement can improve quality of life (QoL) and symptom burden of patients with advanced cancer. It is unclear to what extent this effect is sustained in daily practice of hospital care.

Objective: This observational study aims to investigate the effect of PCT consultation on QoL and symptom burden of hospitalized patients with advanced cancer in daily practice.

Development of a prediction model to target screening for high blood pressure in children.

Targeted screening for childhood high blood pressure may be more feasible than routine blood pressure measurement in all children to avoid unnecessary harms, overdiagnosis or costs. Targeting maybe based e.g.

The association between palliative care team consultation and hospital costs for patients with advanced cancer: An observational study in 12 Dutch hospitals.

Background: Early palliative care team consultation has been shown to reduce costs of hospital care. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between palliative care team (PCT) consultation and the content and costs of hospital care in patients with advanced cancer.

Material And Methods: A prospective, observational study was conducted in 12 Dutch hospitals.

Validation of a score chart to predict the risk of chronic mesenteric ischemia and development of an updated score chart.

Background And Objective: The objective of this article is to externally validate and update a recently published score chart for chronic mesenteric ischemia (CMI).

Methods: A multicenter prospective cohort analysis was conducted of 666 CMI-suspected patients referred to two Dutch specialized CMI centers. Multidisciplinary consultation resulted in expert-based consensus diagnosis after which CMI consensus patients were treated.

The calibrated model-based concordance improved assessment of discriminative ability in patient clusters of limited sample size.

Background: Discriminative ability is an important aspect of prediction model performance, but challenging to assess in clustered (e.g., multicenter) data.

Evaluating the impact of prediction models: lessons learned, challenges, and recommendations.

An important aim of clinical prediction models is to positively impact clinical decision making and subsequent patient outcomes. The impact on clinical decision making and patient outcome can be quantified in prospective comparative-ideally cluster-randomized-studies, known as 'impact studies'. However, such impact studies often require a lot of time and resources, especially when they are (cluster-)randomized studies.

A Predictive Model of Postnatal Surgical Intervention in Children With Prenatally Detected Congenital Anomalies of the Kidney and Urinary Tract.

The aim of this study was to identify predictive factors and develop a model to assess individualized risk of postnatal surgical intervention in patients with antenatal hydronephrosis. This is a retrospective cohort study of 694 infants with prenatally detected congenital anomalies of kidney and urinary tract with a median follow-up time of 37 months. The main event of interest was postnatal surgical intervention.

Autonomy Challenges in Epigenetic Risk-Stratified Cancer Screening: How Can Patient Decision Aids Support Informed Consent?

Information of an individual's epigenome can be useful in cancer screening to enable personalised decision making on participation, treatment options and further screening strategies. However, adding this information might result in complex risk predictions on multiple diseases, unsolicited findings and information on (past) environmental exposure and behaviour. This complicates informed consent procedures and may impede autonomous decision-making.

Dynamic prediction of childhood high blood pressure in a population-based birth cohort: a model development study.

Objectives: To develop a dynamic prediction model for high blood pressure at the age of 9-10 years that could be applied at any age between birth and the age of 6 years in community-based child healthcare.

Design, Setting And Participants: Data were used from 5359 children in a population-based prospective cohort study in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Outcome Measure: High blood pressure was defined as systolic and/or diastolic blood pressure ≥95th percentile for gender, age and height.

Childhood prediction models for hypertension later in life: a systematic review.

Background: Hypertension, even during childhood, increases the risk of developing atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Therefore, starting prevention of hypertension early in the life course could be beneficial. Prediction models might be useful for identifying children at increased risk of developing hypertension, which may enable targeted primordial prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Preconception risk of gestational diabetes: Development of a prediction model in nulliparous Australian women.

Aim: To develop a prediction model for preconception identification of women at risk of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).

Methods: Data from a prospective cohort, the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health, were used. Nulliparous women aged 18-23 who reported a pregnancy up to age 37-42 were included.

Prediction models for endometrial cancer for the general population or symptomatic women: A systematic review.

Objective: To provide an overview of prediction models for the risk of developing endometrial cancer in women of the general population or for the presence of endometrial cancer in symptomatic women.

Methods: We systematically searched the Embase and Pubmed database until September 2017 for relevant publications. We included studies describing the development, the external validation, or the updating of a multivariable model for predicting endometrial cancer in the general population or symptomatic women.

Development of a clinical prediction model for an international normalised ratio ≥ 4·5 in hospitalised patients using vitamin K antagonists.

Vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) used for the prevention and treatment of thromboembolic disease, increase the risk of bleeding complications. We developed and validated a model to predict the risk of an international normalised ratio (INR) ≥ 4·5 during a hospital stay. Adult patients admitted to a tertiary hospital and treated with VKAs between 2006 and 2010 were analysed.

Epigenome-based cancer risk prediction: rationale, opportunities and challenges.

The incidence of cancer is continuing to rise and risk-tailored early diagnostic and/or primary prevention strategies are urgently required. The ideal risk-predictive test should: integrate the effects of both genetic and nongenetic factors and aim to capture these effects using an approach that is both biologically stable and technically reproducible; derive a score from easily accessible biological samples that acts as a surrogate for the organ in question; and enable the effectiveness of risk-reducing measures to be monitored. Substantial evidence has accumulated suggesting that the epigenome and, in particular, DNA methylation-based tests meet all of these requirements.

Validation of prediction models: examining temporal and geographic stability of baseline risk and estimated covariate effects.

Background: Stability in baseline risk and estimated predictor effects both geographically and temporally is a desirable property of clinical prediction models. However, this issue has received little attention in the methodological literature. Our objective was to examine methods for assessing temporal and geographic heterogeneity in baseline risk and predictor effects in prediction models.

Validation of the Feverkidstool and procalcitonin for detecting serious bacterial infections in febrile children.

BackgroundTo validate the Feverkidstool, a prediction model consisting of clinical signs and symptoms and C-reactive protein (CRP) to identify serious bacterial infections (SBIs) in febrile children, and to determine the incremental diagnostic value of procalcitonin.MethodsThis prospective observational study that was carried out at two Dutch emergency departments included children with fever, aged 1 month to 16 years. The prediction models were developed with polytomous logistic regression differentiating "pneumonia" and "other SBIs" from "non-SBIs" using standardized, routinely collected data on clinical signs and symptoms, CRP, and procalcitonin.

Angiogenic Markers Predict Pregnancy Complications and Prolongation in Preeclampsia: Continuous Versus Cutoff Values.

To assess the incremental value of a single determination of the serum levels of sFlt-1 (soluble Fms-like tyrosine kinase 1) and PlGF (placental growth factor) or their ratio, without using cutoff values, for the prediction of maternal and fetal/neonatal complications and pregnancy prolongation, 620 women with suspected/confirmed preeclampsia, aged 18 to 48 years, were included in a prospective, multicenter, observational cohort study. Women had singleton pregnancies and a median pregnancy duration of 34 (range, 20-41) weeks. Complications occurred in 118 women and 248 fetuses.

Prediction of Multiple Recurrent Events: A Comparison of Extended Cox Models in Bladder Cancer.

Recurrence of bladder cancer can occur repeatedly in the same patient after treatment of the primary tumor. Models predicting the risk of a next recurrence may inform individualized decision-making on surveillance frequency. We aimed to assess the usefulness of extensions of the Cox proportional hazards model for repeated events in this context.

Erratum to: Methods for evaluating medical tests and biomarkers.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s41512-016-0001-y.].

Validation and updating of risk models based on multinomial logistic regression.

Background: Risk models often perform poorly at external validation in terms of discrimination or calibration. Updating methods are needed to improve performance of multinomial logistic regression models for risk prediction.

Methods: We consider simple and more refined updating approaches to extend previously proposed methods for dichotomous outcomes.

FGFR3, TERT and OTX1 as a Urinary Biomarker Combination for Surveillance of Patients with Bladder Cancer in a Large Prospective Multicenter Study.

Purpose: Patients with nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer are followed with frequent cystoscopies. In this study FGFR3, TERT and OTX1 were investigated as a diagnostic urinary marker combination during followup of patients with primary nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer.

Materials And Methods: In this international, multicenter, prospective study 977 patients with nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer were included.

A closed testing procedure to select an appropriate method for updating prediction models.

Prediction models fitted with logistic regression often show poor performance when applied in populations other than the development population. Model updating may improve predictions. Previously suggested methods vary in their extensiveness of updating the model.

Study protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial to evaluate a referral strategy for axial spondyloarthritis in young primary care patients with chronic low back pain; an impact study.

Background: Axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) is a disabling inflammatory joint disease with chronic low back pain (CLBP) as leading symptom. Recognizing axSpA in the large amount of CLBP patients is difficult for general practioners (GP). This evaluation aims to assess the effect of a referral strategy for axSpA in young primary care patients with CLBP by comparing the use of the strategy with usual care.