Application to Emory ALS Sample Clauses

Application to Emory ALS. Clinic Data‌ The ALS registry dataset includes data from 729 patients who visited the Emory ALS clinic at least once from January 1, 1997 and July 31, 2011. All individuals were diagnosed with ALS prior to first clinic visit, and none had received PEG treatment. Of these patients, 38 patients were excluded for not having any follow up clinic visits within 1 year of their first clinic visit, 25 were excluded for having extremely long survival times (>5 years post- baseline), and 86 were excluded for having no post-baseline measurements of the outcome BMI within the first year of follow up. Characteristics measured at baseline for each individual include sex, site of ALS onset, age at diagnosis, BMI at baseline, and days from diagnosis to first clinic visit (∆TDX). Addition- ally, some individual characteristics are measured at each clinic visit including forced vital capacity (FVC), change in FVC from baseline (∆FV Cto ), change in BMI from baseline (∆BMIto ), and total number of clinic visits. Those char- acteristics that are measured as continuous variables (namely age at diagnosis, BMI at baseline, FVC, and change in FVC from baseline) are normalized be- fore inclusion as covariates for the propensity score model, principal strata model, or outcome model. A comparison of those who receive treatment within one year of follow-up and those who do not among the remaining 580 individuals in the ALS registry is available in Table 2.2. Of the 200 treated patients 41.5% or 83 individuals are alive one year from baseline, while of the 384 untreated individuals 54.2% or 206 individuals are alive at this time-point (p < 0.01). In general, treated individuals tend to have characteristics that align with greater risk of advanced disease, such as smaller values of mean FVC, increased age, lower proportions of spinal onset, and higher proportions of females. Baseline measurements of BMI are not significantly different among the treated and untreated populations were not significant at a level of α = 0.05, however, FVC measurements taken at baseline are significantly different (p < 0.01), with treated individuals having a lower mean measurement than un- treated individuals. Demographic characteristics such as age at diagnosis and sex are also significantly different among treated and untreated, with treated individuals being about 3 years older and more likely to be female than un- treated individuals (p < 0.01 and p = 0.02 respectively). Additionally, the proportion of...