PMID- 17605799
OWN - NLM
STAT- PubMed-not-MEDLINE
DCOM- 20070813
LR  - 20240414
IS  - 1742-5573 (Electronic)
IS  - 1742-5573 (Linking)
VI  - 4
DP  - 2007 Jul 2
TI  - Mortality ascertainment of participants in the National Wilms Tumor Study using 
      the National Death Index: comparison of active and passive follow-up results.
PG  - 5
AB  - Long term studies of childhood cancer survivors are hampered by difficulties in 
      tracking young adult participants. After performing a National Death Index (NDI) 
      search we sought to identify which factors best predicted a match among known 
      decedents from the National Wilms Tumor Study (NWTS) and to determine if record 
      linkage could substitute for missing follow-up in a cohort of NWTS survivors. To 
      our knowledge, this is the first study to compare passive mortality follow-up 
      using the NDI to active follow-up of a childhood and young adult population. 
      Records for 984 known decedents and 3,406 subjects whose January 1, 2002 vital 
      status was unknown were sent to the NDI in June 2003. In April 2005 NWTS 
      follow-up records were used to reassess January 1, 2002 vital status. Matches 
      were established for 709 of 789 known decedents (sensitivity 89.9%) with a date 
      of death between 1979 and 2001, the calendar period covered by the NDI at the 
      time of the search. No matches were identified among 1,052 subjects known to be 
      alive in 2002 (specificity 100%). Factors associated with decreased sensitivity 
      were an unknown social security number (sensitivity 87.8%), Hispanic ethnicity 
      (76.4%) and foreign birth (56.5%). For 2,351 subjects with 2002 vital status 
      unknown who had 13,166 pre 2002 person-years of missing observation, only 18 
      deaths were ascertained by the NDI whereas 79.3 were expected based on NWTS 
      mortality data. Mortality analyses based strictly on NDI search results and those 
      based on NWTS follow-up augmented with NDI search results yielded inflated 
      estimates of the 15 year survival rate when compared with estimates based on NWTS 
      active follow-up. Match rates were comparable to those observed in adult 
      populations. Since the same selection factors were likely associated with NDI 
      failure to match and NWTS loss to follow-up, use of the NDI to fill in missing 
      follow-up data appears unwarranted.
FAU - Cotton, Cecilia A
AU  - Cotton CA
AD  - Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Box 357232, Seattle, WA 
      98195, USA. ccotton@u.washington.edu
FAU - Peterson, Susan
AU  - Peterson S
FAU - Norkool, Patricia A
AU  - Norkool PA
FAU - Breslow, Norman E
AU  - Breslow NE
LA  - eng
GR  - R01 CA054498/CA/NCI NIH HHS/United States
PT  - Journal Article
DEP - 20070702
PL  - England
TA  - Epidemiol Perspect Innov
JT  - Epidemiologic perspectives & innovations : EP+I
JID - 101231646
PMC - PMC1934904
EDAT- 2007/07/04 09:00
MHDA- 2007/07/04 09:01
PMCR- 2007/07/02
CRDT- 2007/07/04 09:00
PHST- 2006/09/29 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2007/07/02 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2007/07/04 09:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2007/07/04 09:01 [medline]
PHST- 2007/07/04 09:00 [entrez]
PHST- 2007/07/02 00:00 [pmc-release]
AID - 1742-5573-4-5 [pii]
AID - 10.1186/1742-5573-4-5 [doi]
PST - epublish
SO  - Epidemiol Perspect Innov. 2007 Jul 2;4:5. doi: 10.1186/1742-5573-4-5.