Statistical Program
The Division of Biostatistics and Clinical Outcomes provides
statistical resources to clinical and basic research programs in the
Department of Anesthesiology. We contribute to experimental design,
data analysis, and scientific interpretation of clinical and basic
research studies. Our mission is to promote research of the highest
quality by encouraging application of sound statistical principles and
by developing productive collaborations with clinicians, research
faculty, and other members of the research community.
Training Program
Part of our mission is to promote a sound understanding of statistical
principles. We view the one-on-one exchange that clarifies
relationships between study goals, experimental design, and statistical
inference as a vital and rewarding aspect of collaboration. Effective
collaboration, however, acknowledges that the value of quantitative
methods must emerge from the context of investigation. To this end, we
actively mentor research fellows in the statistical aspects of their
chosen project. Our division also participates in ongoing discussions
of statistical issues at conferences and seminars with faculty,
fellows, and medical students.
Research Program
The division contributes to improved patient care by aiding
interpretation of research results and enabling dissemination of new
insights through peer-reviewed publication. Because the department’s
clinical and basic research programs interact in a synergistic way,
with clinical research contributing novel hypotheses to basic research
and basic research translating into clinically important advances, our
contributions to both clinical and basic research have much in common.
In both areas, we help clarify the potential of proposed study designs
to achieve their goals by providing sample size or power computations.
Our experience with the structure of different patient databases and
protocols for populating them helps ensure the feasibility of
retrospective studies and inform the design of prospective ones.
Perhaps our most visible role in research support involves data
analysis. We bring a wide array of contemporary analysis methods
involving statistical modeling, hypothesis testing, and parameter
estimation to problems of data interpretation. In addition to
traditional methods of data summary and statistical inference, we
frequently contribute graphical displays of data for presentation or
publication.
During the year, we have continued
to contribute to clinical research studies such as protection from
perioperative organ injury, alternative analgesic techniques, and
utility of transesophageal echocardiography. We have also continued to
support basic research studies involving mechanisms underlying
perioperative effects on long-term quality of life and genetic
associations with cardiac surgery outcomes. In addition to these
studies, we have contributed to the development of research proposals
in support of the department’s strong commitment to externally funded
research. Over the past year, we worked on many research projects
involving investigators at all levels. Our collaborative efforts
yielded 12 co-authored publications. Among them, we note that Dr.
Morris’ work on genotyping errors received a Fellows Award for Research
Excellence from the NIH.
Effective collaboration
requires critical evaluation and appropriate application of
contemporary statistical methods. Areas of continuing interest include
applications of factor analysis to cognitive outcomes data, statistical
methods for detecting genetic association with clinically important
outcomes, and feature identification and classification in
high-dimensional data such as microarray and metabolomic data. We have
also continued to update our knowledge of statistical software.
We continue to serve as members of Data Safety and Monitoring Boards
for several study protocols within the department. This ongoing
vigilance toward unanticipated outcomes helps ensure safe care for
patients while seeking the best treatments.
Goals
Our goals for the coming year are to continue to respond in timely
fashion to new requests, to promote greater understanding of
statistical principles, and to play a vital role in research that leads
to improved patient care and outcomes.
As part of the Clinical Anesthesia Research Endeavors group, which oversees
clinical research within the department, we look forward to engaging in
new clinical and basic research initiatives and to enhancing awareness
of statistical principles and their role in understanding quantitative
relationships.
The upcoming year promises increased efficiency in access to research data as we continue to
collaborate with Duke Health Technology Solutions’ perioperative
services group to establish a data dictionary. As a well documented
catalogue linking existing databases to standardized medical
terminology, the data dictionary will function as a vehicle for
communication, allowing researchers to identify available data, and as
an organizing principle for computing infrastructure design, allowing
researchers to efficiently access a wide variety of data. We look
forward to the positive impact this substantial data management project
will have on improving the efficiency of data access within the
department.
In the coming year, we in the
Division of Biostatistics and Clinical Outcomes will continue to apply
our complementary mix of quantitative skills and strong commitment to
effective collaboration to ensure the department’s statistical needs
are met. We look forward to productive collaborations on challenging
research initiatives.
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