Published online October 2, 2006
PEDIATRICS Vol. 118 No. 4 October 2006, pp. 1797 (doi:10.1542/peds.2006-1641)

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Predictors of Fatality in Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome Lack Numbers

John Harrington, MD
General Pediatrics
New York Medical College
Valhalla, NY 10595

To the Editor.—

I congratulate Oakes et al¹ for attempting to identify possible risk factors for mortality in pediatric patients with postdiarrheal hemolytic uremic syndrome. Obviously, performing a retrospective review of charts over a 33-year period can have its limitations, not the least of which is uniformity of data. Even with multivariate analysis, it might be somewhat speculative to make some type of predictive model with only 12 comparative cases. Understandably, a physician in the intermountain west area may not have the same access to a tertiary care facility as a physician located on one of the coasts, and this type of predictive model may prove to be extremely useful.

However, I do have some concerns with their Table 3. It seems there are several typographical mistakes, where the text does not match up with the table. For example, "lethargy" had a P value in the text of .016, but in the table it is listed as 0.3. In addition, the P value in the text for "edema" is listed as .035 and in the table as 0.35. However, when I performed the actual calculations on a straightforward 2-by-2 contingency table, the relative risk and P value were 1.6 and .48, respectively. Several of the other parameters of clinical illnesses in the table were also intuitively, and statistically, not correlating with the numbers found in the manuscript. Because I consider myself a very weak statistician, at best, I think a reanalysis of your numbers with a statistician might help solidify your conclusions.

REFERENCE

1. Oakes RS, Siegler RL, McReynolds MA, Pysher T, Pavia AT. Predictors of fatality in postdiarrheal hemolytic uremic syndrome. Pediatrics. 2006;117 :1656 –1662[Abstract/Free Full Text]

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PEDIATRICS (ISSN 1098-4275). ©2006 by the American Academy of Pediatrics

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This Article Extract Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services E-mail this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to My File Cabinet Download to citation manager Request Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Harrington, J. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Harrington, J. Related Collections Infectious Disease & Immunity Related AAP Red Book topics: Escherichia coli Diarrhea... Social Bookmarking                         What's this?