Thanks, Pat.
So looking at the SEER data base the authors used for their study we realize the population studied was Medicare patients. The link you provided had words to the effect and I quote, "Overview of the SEER-Medicare data: Content, research applications, and generalizability to the United States elderly population". The key word being elderly. If I read the abstract correctly, the data base pretains to the elderly population. Not that this is not of importance in of itself, i.e. health care for the elderly (especially, since I am a member of that population of interest!!
) but to generalize to the population as a whole is misleading. There are bound to be some built in bias in treatment of this population, i.e. treatment of a 90 year old is different than that of a 65 year old. I received a neobladder at age 65, not so sure I would have at age 90. I will attempt to follow up on this observation with the authors of the study. If I am wrong on this point I will certainly report it to the forum. However, the abstract's statement, "An explicit review of claims data indicated that between 31.6% and 46.8% of the 6326 bladder cancer deaths identified in the SEER-Medicare data potentially were avoidable" would seem to support my obseration.
I certainly do not mean to criticize your posting of the study. And I don't want to make a big deal of this. I would just like to remind us all of the "generalizablilty" of some of the research findings we run across.
We have to be careful re: the "research conclusions" and general applications.
Thank you for your efforts on our behalf. Keep those research studies coming.
I will certainly keep reading them.
Gordon