Example: Age Adjust - Petrochemical Workers

Lead Author(s): Jeff Martin, MD

Person-Time Rates for Cohort Analysis

In Austin's (1983) study of petrochemical workers:

Cohort of petrochemical workers Mortality determined from 1941-1977 Overall death rate = Question: Is this a high death rate?

Calculate Standardized Mortality Ratio

In this study: Ratio of 765 observed/924 expected = This is called a Standardized Mortality Ratio (SMR).

Healthy Worker Effect

The problem with this analysis is what is known as the healthy worker effect.

Cause Specific SMRs

More specific outcomes might be more revealing, such as whether the cohort experienced a higher than expected rate of certain types of cancer that are suspected of being caused by petrochemical exposure, and, in fact, the research question that prompted the study was whether there was evidence for occupational risk of brain tumors in the petrochemical industry.

A sample of a number of cause-of-death specific comparisons that were made in the study are shown here.
0304_table2_smr.JPG

These specific SMR's are for employess who were hourly and had greater than six months of employment.

Given the large numbers of comparisons that were made and hence the probability of finding a significantly elevated SMR by chance, interpretation of the these subgroup results has to be made with caution.

Although the SMR for brain and CNS tumors had an associated p-value of 0.05 for this subgroup, overall in all employees the SMR for brain and CNS was 162 with 95% CI = 83-283, and the authors concluded that there was insufficient evidence to say that these were occupationally caused tumors.

References

Austin, S. G., & Schnatter, A. R. (1983). A cohort mortality study of petrochemical workers. J Occup Med, 25(4), 304-312.