Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36962541›Full record

ArticlePLOS global public health2022

Is aggregated surveillance data a reliable method for constructing tuberculosis care cascades? A secondary data analysis from Uganda.

Elizabeth B White, Raúl U Hernández-Ramírez, Robert Kaos Majwala, Talemwa Nalugwa, Tania Reza, Adithya Cattamanchi, Achilles Katamba, J Lucian Davis

Open access · goldFull text read
In one paragraph

Article in PLOS global public health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
0.1field-weighted citation impact, top 55% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed, 1 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.

Elizabeth B WhiteDepartment of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, United States of America.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9242-3507
Raúl U Hernández-RamírezCenter for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, United States of America.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8272-1474
Robert Kaos MajwalaNational Tuberculosis and Leprosy Program, Ministry of Health, Kampala, Uganda.
Talemwa NalugwaUganda Tuberculosis Implementation Research Consortium, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
Tania RezaUganda Tuberculosis Implementation Research Consortium, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
Adithya CattamanchiUganda Tuberculosis Implementation Research Consortium, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
Achilles KatambaUganda Tuberculosis Implementation Research Consortium, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
J Lucian DavisDepartment of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, United States of America.
Yale University · USMakerere University · UGUniversity of California, San Francisco · USMinistry of Health · UG

Funding

SIngle-saMPLE tuberculosis evaluation to facilitate linkage to care: The SIMPLE TB trialR01HL130192 · NHLBI · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO · PI CATTAMANCHI, ADITHYA · 2016 to 2020
$3.2M
Understanding the Quality of Tuberculosis Care in UgandaF31HL156805 · NHLBI · YALE UNIVERSITY · PI WHITE, ELIZABETH B · 2020 to 2021
$53k
NHLBI NIH HHS F31 HL156805NHLBI NIH HHS R01 HL130192
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

To accelerate tuberculosis (TB) control and elimination, reliable data is needed to improve the quality of TB care. We assessed agreement between a surveillance dataset routinely collected for Uganda's national TB program and a high-fidelity dataset collected from the same source documents for a research study from 32 health facilities in 2017 and 2019 for six measurements: 1) Smear-positive and 2) GeneXpert-positive diagnoses, 3) bacteriologically confirmed and 4) clinically diagnosed treatment initiations, and the number of people initiating TB treatment who were also 5) living with HIV or 6) taking antiretroviral therapy. We measured agreement as the average difference between the two methods, expressed as the average ratio of the surveillance counts to the research data counts, its 95% limits of agreement (LOA), and the concordance correlation coefficient. We used linear mixed models to investigate whether agreement changed over time or was associated with facility characteristics. We found good overall agreement with some variation in the expected facility-level agreement for the number of smear positive diagnoses (average ratio [95% LOA]: 1.04 [0.38-2.82]; CCC: 0.78), bacteriologically confirmed treatment initiations (1.07 [0.67-1.70]; 0.82), and people living with HIV (1.11 [0.51-2.41]; 0.82). Agreement was poor for Xpert positives, with surveillance data undercounting relative to research data (0.45 [0.099-2.07]; 0.36). Although surveillance data overcounted relative to research data for clinically diagnosed treatment initiations (1.52 [0.71-3.26]) and number of people taking antiretroviral therapy (1.71 [0.71-4.12]), their agreement as assessed by CCC was not poor (0.82 and 0.62, respectively). Average agreement was similar across study years for all six measurements, but facility-level agreement varied from year to year and was not explained by facility characteristics. In conclusion, the agreement of TB surveillance data with high-fidelity research data was highly variable across measurements and facilities. To advance the use of routine TB data as a quality improvement tool, future research should elucidate and address reasons for variability in its quality.

Identifiers

PMID36962541
PMCPMC10045605
OpenAlexW4309822017

What Socratic holds

Textfull text, public
LicenceCC BY
measurements read26
identifiers read6
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.