RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Percentage of progressors in imaging: can we ignore regressors?
JF RMD Open
JO RMD Open
FD EULAR
SP e000848
DO 10.1136/rmdopen-2018-000848
VO 5
IS 1
A1 Sepriano, Alexandre
A1 Ramiro, Sofia
A1 Landewé, Robert
A1 Dougados, Maxime
A1 van der Heijde, Desirée
YR 2019
UL http://rmdopen.bmj.com/content/5/1/e000848.abstract
AB Stopping or preventing structural progression is a goal common to all inflammatory rheumatic diseases. Imaging may capture structural progression across diseases, but is susceptible to measurement error. Progression can be analysed as a continuous change score over time (eg, mean change of the van der Heijde-modified Sharp score) or as a binary change score (eg, percentage of progressors according to the modified New York criteria). Here, we argue that the former takes measurement error into account while the latter ignores it, which may lead to spurious conclusions. We will argue that assumptions underlying commonly used binary definitions of progression are false and we propose a method that incorporates (inevitable) measurement error.