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CATEGORIES:Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series
SUMMARY:Estimates of life expectancy for compensation afte
r injury - Jane Hutton (University of Warwick)
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20160830T095000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20160830T103000
UID:TALK67116AThttp://talks.cam.ac.uk
URL:http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/67116
DESCRIPTION:When a compensation case arises from an injury\, w
hich might be caused by medical error or an indust
rial or traffic accident\, the financial settlemen
t will often depend on the life expectancy. Compen
sation might be for expected reduction in life tim
e\, or for the cost of additional care during the
rest of the injured person'\;s life.  \;Est
imates based on particular injuries or individual
factors might be requested.
Estimates of ef
fects of injury and life style on mortality use a
variety of data sources\, with no common statistic
s. Many lawyers assume that a larger data set is a
lways better than a smaller data set. Statistician
s should address the questions '\;What is the q
uality of data used?'\; and '\;What are the
biases?'\;. Assessments of the intended populat
ion\, the accuracy of individual items\, the compl
eteness of follow-up and the precise inclusion and
exclusion criteria have to be made and explained.
An article on mortality after spinal cord injury
used a database of 49\,214 people\, initially 50\,
661 people. Five restrictions\, three of which wer
e discussed\, left 31\,531 (62%) eligible people.
The impact of excluding people with missing data o
n major covariates was not reported. I suggest tha
t the detailed check-lists provide by the equator
network are an important resource for evaluation (
http://www.equator-network
.org/).
For some claims\, the effects o
f smoking\, alcohol consumption\, illegal substanc
e use and anorexia or obesity have to be considere
d as well as the main motivation of the claim. Eff
ect sizes might be given as hazard ratios\, standa
rdised mortality rates\, from univariate or multiv
ariate models. Approaches to estimating life expec
tancy which allow for these personal factors inclu
de using reported relative risks\, hazard ratios a
nd excess death rates to modify the death rates fr
om national or regional life tables. I will discus
s the challenges I have faced\, both in estimation
and in communicating results in court\, and the s
olutions I have adopted.
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