Biomedical subjects

Eva Cantoni

Publications and source records attributed to Eva Cantoni.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

A robust approach for skewed and heavy-tailed outcomes in the analysis of health care expenditures.

In this paper robust statistical procedures are presented for the analysis of skewed and heavy-tailed outcomes as they typically occur in health care data. The new estimators and test statistics are extensions of classical maximum likelihood techniques for generalized linear models. In contrast to their classical counterparts, the new robust techniques show lower variability and excellent efficiency properties in the presence of small deviations from the assumed model, i.e. when the underlying distribution of the data lies in a neighborhood of the model. A simulation study, an analysis on real data, and a sensitivity analysis confirm the good theoretical statistical properties of the new techniques.

Health Expenditures↗

PubMed2006

Temperature related mortality and ambulance service interventions during the heat waves of 2003 in Ticino (Switzerland).

OBJECTIVES: This study investigates a potential increase in mortality and in the demand for ambulance emergency services among the elderly in particular, in Ticino in the summer of 2003. METHODS: Mortality rates and emergency ambulance interventions rates were compared with records from the previous years. We considered the whole population, aged 65 and over, as well as 75 and over. RESULTS: The 2003 mortality in the population was not significantly different from the previous years. The number of deaths among the elderly showed a small but significant deviation from the expected values during the first heat wave in June 2003, with no significant impact on the seasonal results. The number of ambulance service interventions was larger than during the previous years. CONCLUSION: These results are consistent with findings in other studies. The heat waves (especially in June), were correlated with a higher number of ambulance callouts. In addition to some geographic, climatic, and social factors that had a protective impact, the response of the emergency services is likely to have contributed to a certain reduction in mortality.

Aged↗

PubMed2005

Variable selection for marginal longitudinal generalized linear models.

Variable selection is an essential part of any statistical analysis and yet has been somewhat neglected in the context of longitudinal data analysis. In this article, we propose a generalized version of Mallows's C(p) (GC(p)) suitable for use with both parametric and nonparametric models. GC(p) provides an estimate of a measure of model's adequacy for prediction. We examine its performance with popular marginal longitudinal models (fitted using GEE) and contrast results with what is typically done in practice: variable selection based on Wald-type or score-type tests. An application to real data further demonstrates the merits of our approach while at the same time emphasizing some important robust features inherent to GC(p).

Bias↗