Statistical methods for evaluating the fine needle aspiration cytology procedure in breast cancer diagnosis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Statistical issues present while evaluating a diagnostic procedure for breast cancer are non rare but often ignored, leading to biased results. We aimed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the fine needle aspiration cytology(FNAC), a minimally invasive and rapid technique potentially used as a rule-in or rule-out test, handling its statistical issues: suspect test results and verification bias.

Methods

We applied different statistical methods to handle suspect results by defining conditional estimates. When considering a partial verification bias, Begg and Greenes method and multivariate imputation by chained equations were applied, however, and a Bayesian approach with respect to each gold standard was used when considering a differential verification bias. At

SUBMITTER: El Chamieh C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8818244 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature