Editor’s highlights from the Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research – March 2023
In this monthly column, I share some of my highlights from the latest issues of the Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research, partner journal of The Evidence Base.
The March issue (Volume 12, Issue 3) of the Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research has now been published, and I’m delighted to share my monthly round-up of Editor’s picks from the issue.
Bayesian hierarchical model-based network meta-analysis to overcome survival extrapolation challenges caused by data immaturity
Methodological papers are always of great interest to our readers, and this month’ issue kicks off with a Methodology paper from Heeg et al. (Cytel, The Netherlands), which addresses the issue of immature data, in which mixture cure models may not be able to accurately estimate the cured fraction or may result in large uncertainty. In their paper, the authors compare a standard Weibull mixture cure (WMC) network meta-analysis (NMA) with a Bayesian hierarchical WMC NMA (BH WMCNMA) approach and assess the impact of the variance over the class effects on the cure rates in the BH WMC NMA approach.
Cost–effectiveness of imipenem/cilastatin/relebactam for hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia
Hospital-acquired infections such as bacterial pneumonia are common and associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality. In some cases, these infections are caused by carbapenem-resistant pathogens and there is a need for new antibiotic agents for use in the treatment of these cases. In their Research Article, Yang et al. (Merck & Co., Inc., NJ, USA) examine the economic value of a new antibiotic, imipenem/cilastatin/relebactam, over piperacillin/tazobactam for treating hospital-acquired pneumonia.
Visualizing the randomized sham-controlled trial in orthopedic research: proposed steps to conducting a total knee arthroplasty randomized controlled trial
Total knee arthroplasty is the one of the most common and costly elective operations in the world. As well as the surgery itself, patients receive preoperative education and counseling, a rigorous medical optimization checkup to identify modifiable risk factors that affect recovery time and length of stay, and after surgery are typically prescribed physical therapy rehabilitation. Randomized trials showing a subjective improvement with the procedure over placebo intervention are currently lacking, and in their Perspective article, Tran and Prasad (University of California San Francisco, CA, USA) argue for the necessity of sham-controlled surgical trials in this setting and provide a surgical atlas showing how a sham operation may be performed.
I hope you enjoy these articles, along with the rest of the content in the March issue. JCER welcomes presubmission enquiries, so do get in touch if you are interested in contributing to a future issue.