Erythropoietin Dose and Mortality in Hemodialysis Patients: Marginal Structural Model to Examine Causality.

ABSTRACT: It has been previously reported that a higher erythropoiesis stimulating agent (ESA) dose in hemodialysis patients is associated with adverse outcomes including mortality; however the causal relationship between ESA and mortality is still hotly debated. We hypothesize ESA dose indeed exhibits a direct linear relationship with mortality in models of association implementing the use of a marginal structural model (MSM), which controls for time-varying confounding and examines causality in the ESA dose-mortality relationship. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 128 598 adult hemodialysis patients over a 5-year follow-up period to evaluate the association between weekly ESA (epoetin-α) dose and mortality risk. A MSM was used to account for baseline and time-varying covariates especial

SUBMITTER: Streja E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4889858 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature