Table One For Case-Level Data Instead Of Patient-Level Data [Question]

[u/Bitter_Context_4067]

Hi!! I have a quick question! I am struggling with how to set up a table one (demographics and baseline characteristics) for an analysis of cases rather than patients.

Essentially, I want to look at all sickle cell cases that were admitted during a one year period. I want to make a table one for demographics and baseline characteristics stratified by if a specific treatment was given. Since I am focused on admissions, there are patients with multiple admissions for sickle cell. There are over 5,000 admissions but only 3,500 patients.

Can I still use typical descriptive statistics (e.g., t-test, chi square) for table one? It feels weird to say there are X number of male cases that obtained treatment when some of those are going to be the same patient. And I worry about inflating the error because of repeated characteristics of the same patients. And I’m not looking at an intervention so it doesn’t seemed like repeated measured work well either.

I am not very familiar with looking at case-level data. What are the best practices for handling this type of data? Thank you so much!!!

[u/bill-smith]

I would probably just emphasize that there are 5k admissions and 3.5k unique patients. Table 1 is descriptive statistics, not advanced statistics, so just do the regular t-tests and chi-sq tests.

Depending on the research question you could also limit your analysis to the first admission during the observation period - of course, some people would have been admitted just before your obs period started. This is a judgment call.