Response to ‘Presenting hypertension, burn injury, and mortality in combat casualties: Methodological issues’

We thank Safiri and Ayubi for their letter to the Editor discussing the methodology of our manuscript [1]. The authors raise 2 primary methodological considerations warranting further discussion. First, the authors argue that the non-linearity of mean arterial pressure (MAP) using the full range of MAP with restricted cubic splines is preferred to the three distinct categories of MAP we used based on the U-shaped probability of death between mortality and MAP. While no explicit rationale is given for the preference of restricted cubic splines over categorization, there are several well written publications highlighting the strengths and preference of restricted cubic splines over simply dichotomizing or categorizing a continuous variable [2 –5].

Source: Burns : Journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries - May 9, 2018 Category: Cosmetic Surgery Authors: Jud C. Janak, Anders J. Davidson, Jonathan A. Sosnovc, Ian J. Stewart, Jeffrey T. Howard Tags: Letter to the Editor Source Type: research