Finding new agents that are active in the secondline setting and identifying relevant outcome variables and predictive pretreatment variables are crucial in improving survival and quality of life for this patient population.
Adding to our earlier map of trial outcomes, we aimed to (1) identify relevant outcomes not measured in trials, (2) identify outcomes from stakeholder focus groups, and (3) organize outcomes into a taxonomy.
To identify relevant outcomes, the ONTOP group will submit a list of outcomes to an international expert advisory panel of geriatricians for evaluation, discussion and rating.
For example, we searched diseases of interest using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) only, while we combined text word searches with MeSH to identify relevant outcomes.
In a meeting held in October 2013, an ESCEO-EUGMS (European Union Geriatric Medicine Society) working group discussed the possibility of identifying patients who would most benefit from treatment for OA, to better orientate research and to identify relevant outcomes in clinical trials.
All creatinine tests analysed during the period were included, as well as other laboratory measurements routinely linked to CKD and used to guide ongoing patient assessment, monitor disease progression and identify relevant outcomes (Table 1).
As such we selected tests which are routinely ordered for patients with common medical conditions to guide ongoing patient assessment, monitor disease progression and identify relevant outcomes (Table 1).
In this study, we constructed randomForest in identifying relevant variables to our outcome variable using the randomForest package in R (2.10.1).
Novel data analysis methodologies, such as machine learning, offer large potential for identifying relevant data for specific biological outcomes based on complex multidimensional datasets.
The non-health outcomes were obtained from the study of Van Mastrigt et al. [ 14] that identified relevant broader outcomes in a health promotion context by searching the I-database of the Center for Healthy Living of the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment [ 13].
