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@Mark T, are you Swedish btw, is that why you’re arguing: “This study is therefore quite relevant to hernia patients in Sweden” (as you stated in a related thread).
Why would you ask if I am Swedish? I said it is quite relevant to hernia patients there, because the sample covers almost 98% of repairs in their country…while you are suggesting the study is “biased” and “irrelevant” (your words).
They plainly state that nearly half of the 22,000 cases had surgery performed by a surgeon with a load less than 26 a year. That should raise a red flag. Apparently the researchers assume surgeon load is a minor factor as they provide no other information for the upper range of surgeon load. That raises an alarm because the database has all that info.
Why should that raise a ‘red flag’? They are responsibly disclosing specific and relevant details about the surgeons. They clearly do not assume it is a minor factor, because they included surgeon volume as a variable.
How comical that you only now criticize them for not providing the upper load (which is what *I* noted and your response was “The fact that the median surgeon load is 25 means that the range is zero to 50!”. . At least you understand what the median is now, I guess? But now you are just parroting something that I said!
“They describe pure tissue repair cases as outside of the framework of this study apparently because as they say “there were very few recorded in the register.” “Very few” of course is vague. Why not state the number? It actually could be nearly 2,000 cases based on their account how the cases came to total 22,000.
We can deduce that it is nowhere near 2,000 tissue repair cases considering three of the five repair groups had fewer cases than that (Open anterior: 18,034; TEP: 2,688; TAPP: 380; CAP: 1022; and OPPM: 793). You would know this if you actually read the study. Instead, you strangely surmise they might be biased against tissue repairs (?).
The upshot is that the elephant in the room is ignored by not considering the effects of surgeon experience.
They did consider this. Re-read my posts. I included some concerns/questions about how it was considered though.
I don’t know what else to say…you simply don’t understand the methodology and are not taking the study within its proper context.