Ruth Keogh, DPhil (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)
Title: Emulating Target Trials to Study the Effect of Lung Transplantation on Survival in Cystic Fibrosis.
ٰ:Ruth is Professor of Biostatistics & Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (Medical Statistics Department and Centre for Statistical Methodology). Her research focuses on the development and application of statistical causal inference methods for answering questions about the effects of treatments on health outcomes using observational data from patient registries and electronic health records. She is particularly focusing on applications in the area of cystic fibrosis. Ruth is funded by a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship.
Link to website:
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a life-shortening conditioning affecting around 10,500 people in the UK, and lung transplantation is an option for people with CF who have end-stage lung disease. Making decisions about transplant is difficult and there is a lack of information about its benefits, as randomized trials in this area are infeasible. Therefore, understanding the impact of transplant on survival relies on observational data such as national transplant registers. I will discuss the use of “target trials” to articulate different causal questions about the effects of transplantation and discuss how to emulate the target trials using observational longitudinal data on patient measures, transplant status, and survival. Causal questions include what the effect is of joining the transplant wait-list and what the effect of transplant is in those who received one. I will present some preliminary results based on data from the UK Cystic Fibrosis Registry and discuss plans for enhancing this work by making use of additional data sources.