Statistical Methods for Non-Detectible Data in Tear Cytokine Measurements - SDC Clinical

ARVO Annual Meeting, May 2012

Poster

There are many instances in which laboratory measurements have limits of detection. The results for such tests will be reported as “< d” where d represents the limit below which measurements cannot be (reliably) obtained. A number of methods can be used to handle such data when calculating numerical summary statistics. Here, we use the example of IL-6 tear cytokine levels to describe a simple, reliable method to handle such instances, and compare this method to other commonly used approaches.

This poster details:

• Description of commonly used methods for calculating summary statistics in the presence of non-detectible data
• Comparisons of and biases introduced by each statistical method
• Proposed method on how to handle non-detectible data such as tear cytokine data

Authored by:

• Heidi Goldfarb, PhD
• Dale Usner, PhD
• Kathryn Kennedy, PhD
• Dale Kennedy, PhD
• Richard Abelson, PhD