You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Letters to the editor
Inhaled corticosteroids and mortality in COPD
  1. P Ernst,
  2. S Suissa
  1. McGill Pharmacoepidemiology Research Unit, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
  1. Correspondence to:
    Dr P Ernst
    McGill Pharmacoepidemiology Research Unit, McGill University, Montreal, Canada; pierre.ernst{at}mcgill.ca

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    We read with interest the recent paper by Sin and colleagues1 which, we believe, raises more questions than it answers.

    A major concern is the fact that ascertainment of mortality was incomplete for a significant proportion of patients (973/5086), corresponding to 19% of the total (not the reported 12%) who withdrew prematurely from the study. This loss to follow up was more likely to occur in the placebo group. The authors use the ISOLDE study2 to claim that patients who withdrew prematurely were more likely to die, and that therefore the hazard ratio is in fact an underestimate of the benefit of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS). However, the ISOLDE data are themselves contradictory on this point. The claim is based on …

    View Full Text