What about absolute risks?

doi:10.1136/bmj.b1197

Published 23 March 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1197
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1197

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Resting heart rate as predictor

What about absolute risks?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

It is a fundamental principle in public health that you shouldnever quote a relative risk without also giving the absoluterisk.¹ Failure to follow this simple precept results in theweekly health scares that engage the popular press, when anincreased relative risk is taken as a threat to the individual.

Hsia et al flagrantly ignore this principle when they claimthat "resting heart rate independently predicts myocardial infarctionor coronary death in women."² They base this assertion on ahazard ratio of 1.26 (95% confidence interval 1.11 to 1.42)for these events in women above the top quintile for heart ratecompared with women below the bottom. They do not quote absoluterisks. Using some simplifying assumptions (equating hazard rateto relative risk, assuming total events in lower fifth and upperfifth is proportional to the number of subjects in these groups),I estimated the absolute risk of . . . [Full text of this article]

Michael J Campbell, professor of medical statistics¹

¹ Medical Statistics Group, ScHARR, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 4DA

m.j.campbell@sheffield.ac.uk

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