Rob van Hest Capture-recapture Methods in Surveillance - RePub ...

Chapter 3
3.1 Application of capture-recapture analysis in studies on
human diseases
An overview of the applications of capture-recapture methods in human diseases before
1997 is given elsewhere. 1,2 Apart from injury-related capture-recapture studies, these
reports were categorised into four different disease groups, often diseases with a chronic
character. Apparently the characteristics of most of these diseases, their patients and their
registers fulfil criteria for feasibility as well as for agreement with the assumptions
underlying capture-recapture analysis best. In a first group more than 30 capturerecapture
studies were performed for monitoring the incidence of insulin-dependent
diabetes mellitus and in this field capture-recapture analysis has become a standard
method to correct case-ascertainment. A second group consists of capture-recapture
studies on the frequency of birth defects, such as congenital rubella, cleft lip and cleft
palate, spina bifida, Down’s syndrome and other congenital anomalies. A third group of
capture-recapture studies focussed on cancer, e.g. to estimate the completeness of cancer
registries or to estimate breast cancer screening sensitivity. Apart from these three disease
categories, capture-recapture methods were used to estimate the incidence or prevalence
of various diseases such as haemophilia, myocardial infarctions, Huntington’s disease,
mental disease, Rett’s syndrome, and vaccine-associated poliomyelitis. A brief discussion
of these early capture-recapture studies published before 1997 can be found at the
website http://www.pitt.edu/~yuc2/iddm.html, http://www.pitt.edu/~yuc2/birth.html,
http://www.pitt.edu/~yuc2/cancer.html and http://www.pitt.edu/~yuc2/other.html for
diabetes, birth defects, cancer and other diseases respectively (accessed 1 May 2007).
After 1997 more than 100 capture-recapture studies on human diseases other
than infectious diseases or tuberculosis have been published in peer-reviewed journals.
Most of the diseases studied are again chronic conditions and largely follow the same
categories as described above. Approximately half the studies are related to diabetes
mellitus. Birth defects such as neural tube defects, Down’s syndrome, congenital ocular
anomalies, tuberous sclerosis, brain arteriovenous malformations, heart malformations
and other congenital disorders were studied and several reports were related to estimating
cancer incidence or completeness of cancer registries. New groups of diseases are
neurological diseases with a number of studies reporting on Parkinson’s disease, multiple
sclerosis, epilepsy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, hemiplegic migraine
and stroke, and rheumatological disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic sclerosis,
polyarteritis nodosa, dermatomyositis and systemic lupus erythematodes.
Apparently the characteristics of most of these chronic diseases, their patients
and their registers fulfil criteria for feasibility as well as for agreement with the
assumptions underlying capture-recapture analysis best. Perhaps with the exemption of
some neurological and rheumatological conditions, the case-definition is likely
unambiguous and uniform over the various registers. Arguably, for these categories of
diseases sufficient registers are available and possible relationships between these
registers, e.g. clinical registers, laboratory registers, health insurance registers or patient
support and advocacy group registers, violating the independence assumption, are limited
and perhaps avoidable by source selection. The permanent character of most of these
conditions may reduce violation of the closed population assumption.
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