Propensity Scoring after Multiple Imputation in a Retrospective Study on Adjuvant Radiation Therapy in Lymph-Node Positive Vulvar Cancer

  • Christine zu Eulenburg
  • Anna Suling
  • Petra Neuser
  • Alexander Reuss
  • Ulrich Canzler
  • Tanja Fehm
  • Alexander Luyten
  • Martin Hellriegel
  • Linn Woelber
  • Sven Mahner

Abstract

Propensity scoring (PS) is an established tool to account for measured confounding in non-randomized studies. These methods are sensitive to missing values, which are a common problem in observational data. The combination of multiple imputation of missing values and different propensity scoring techniques is addressed in this work. For a sample of lymph node-positive vulvar cancer patients, we re-analyze associations between the application of radiotherapy and disease-related and non-related survival. Inverse-probability-of-treatment-weighting (IPTW) and PS stratification are applied after multiple imputation by chained equation (MICE). Methodological issues are described in detail. Interpretation of the results and methodological limitations are discussed.

Bibliographical data

Original languageEnglish
ISSN1932-6203
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016
PubMed 27802342