Susanne Schmitz

Susanne Schmitz
LIH Luxembourg Institute of Health | CRP Santé · Department of Population Health

Dipl.Math., PhD

About

60
Publications
4,333
Reads
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1,241
Citations
Additional affiliations
June 2016 - present
LIH Luxembourg Institute of Health
Position
  • PostDoc Position
October 2012 - present
National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics
Position
  • Review Team
October 2012 - May 2016
Trinity College Dublin
Position
  • Professor (Assistant)
Education
September 2009 - September 2012
Trinity College Dublin
Field of study
  • Statistics
October 2004 - July 2009
RWTH Aachen University
Field of study
  • Mathematics

Publications

Publications (60)
Article
Background: Cutaneous melanoma is amongst the most aggressive of all skin cancers. Neoadjuvant treatment is a form of induction therapy, given to shrink a cancerous tumour prior to the main treatment (usually surgery). The purpose is to improve survival and surgical outcomes. This review systematically appraises the literature investigating the us...
Article
Full-text available
Network meta‐analysis is a method to combine evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that compare a number of different interventions for a given clinical condition. Usually, this requires a connected network. A possible approach to link a disconnected network is to add evidence from nonrandomized comparisons, using propensity score or ma...
Article
Full-text available
Background Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is a key outcome in cost-utility analyses, which are commonly used to inform healthcare decisions. Different instruments exist to evaluate HRQoL, however while some jurisdictions have a preferred system, no gold standard exists. Standard meta-analysis struggles with the variety of outcome measures,...
Article
Multimorbidity is typically defined as the co-existence of two or more chronic diseases within an individual. Its prevalence is highest among the elderly, with poor quality of life (QoL) being one of the major consequences. This study aims to: (1) understand the relationship between multimorbidity and QoL or health-related quality of life (HRQoL) t...
Article
If the number of treatments in a network meta‐analysis is large, it may be possible and useful to model the main effect of treatment as random, that is to say as random realizations from a normal distribution of possible treatment effects. This then constitutes a third sort of random effect that may be considered in connection with such analyses. T...
Article
Introduction Multimorbidity has become a norm rather than the exception in primary care. It is most frequently defined as the co-existence of 2 or more chronic diseases within an individual. Its prevalence is highest among the elderly population, making this problem a rising and urgent public health concern in ageing societies. Poor quality of life...
Article
Full-text available
Background Network meta-analysis (NMA) allows for the estimation of comparative effectiveness of treatments that have not been studied in head-to-head trials; however, relative treatment effects for all interventions can only be derived where available evidence forms a connected network. Head-to-head evidence is limited in many disease areas, regul...
Article
This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: To assess the effects of neoadjuvant treatments in adults with American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stage III or stage IV melanoma.
Article
Background: In Ireland, all new drugs for which reimbursement by the healthcare payer is sought undergo a health technology assessment by the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics. The National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics estimate expected value of perfect information but not partial expected value of perfect information (owing to computational e...
Article
Background: Anaemia is a common problem experienced by critically-ill people. Treatment with erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs) has been used as a pharmacologic strategy when the blunted response of endogenous erythropoietin has been reported in critically-ill people. The use of ESAs becomes more important where adverse clinical outcomes of...
Article
Aims: The aim of this study was to determine the pharmacokinetic interaction between ivacaftor and ritonavir. Methods: A liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) method was developed for the measurement of ivacaftor in plasma. An open-label, sequential, cross-over study was conducted with 12 healthy volunteers. Three pharmacokinetic profi...
Article
Full-text available
Background: The aim of this study was to compare the cost effectiveness of the current Irish programme of universal BCG vaccination of infants versus a programme which considered selectively vaccinating high risk infants using decision analytical modelling. Methods: The efficacy of the BCG vaccine was re-evaluated to inform a decision analytical...
Article
Aim: To conduct a systematic review investigating reasons for the disparity between the efficacy and effectiveness rates reported in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and observational studies of direct-acting antiviral treatment regimens licensed for use in genotype1 hepatitis C virus infected individuals. Methods: This systematic review was...
Article
Introduction: Randomised studies have demonstrated efficacy of disease-modifying therapies in relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). However it is unclear how the magnitude of treatment efficacy varies across all currently available therapies. Objective: To perform a systematic review and network meta-analysis to evaluate the comparative...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Background Outcomes for multiple myeloma (MM) have improved with the introduction of novel therapies, and ongoing trials suggest positive outlooks for those with relapsed/refractory MM (rrMM). However, head-to-head clinical trials across treatment options are limited, and as such the evidence on relative effectiveness to inform best practice is lac...
Article
Background Decisions on reimbursement of health interventions in many jurisdictions are informed by health technology assessments (HTAs). Historically, the focus of these has often been cost effectiveness or cost utility, while other criteria were considered informally. More recently, there has been an increasing interest in the formal incorporatio...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction: Recently introduced treatments have improved survival outcomes in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma (rrMM), with positive outlooks from ongoing trials. However, evidence on relative effectiveness to inform best practice is lacking due to the paucity of head-to-head clinical trials. This systematic review aimed to compare all tre...
Article
This is the protocol for a review and there is no abstract. The objectives are as follows: With a focus on safety, we aim to assess the effects of ESAs (ESAs alone or in combination) compared with placebo, no treatment or a different active treatment regimen when administered off-label to critically ill patients. We will further describe and explor...
Chapter
This chapter illustrates the use of Bayesian hierarchical models for network meta-analysis using an application in rheumatoid arthritis. A number of biologic agents are licensed for first line treatment in rheumatoid arthritis. All of these have demonstrated considerable effectiveness in placebo controlled trials; however, few head to head comparis...
Article
Patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) and a good performance status typically receive an anti-vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) TKI (sunitinib or pazopanib) as initial therapy. Upon disease progression or intolerance, there are four orally administered agents approved in the second-line setting (including cytokine-r...
Article
Erythropoiesis stimulating agents (ESAs) are used to treat anemia in critically ill patients. This indication is off-label, because it is not licensed by regulatory authorities. Recently ESAs were suspected to harm critically ill patients. Our objective was to assess the safety of ESAs in off-label indications in critically ill patients. Eleven dat...
Article
Estimates of relative efficacy between alternative treatments are crucial for decision making in health care. Bayesian mixed treatment comparison models provide a powerful methodology to obtain such estimates when head-to-head evidence is not available or insufficient. In recent years, this methodology has become widely accepted and applied in econ...
Article
Full-text available
Background Estimates of relative efficacy between alternative treatments are crucial for decision making in health care. When sufficient head to head evidence is not available Bayesian mixed treatment comparison models provide a powerful methodology to obtain such estimates. While models can be fit to a broad range of efficacy measures, this paper...
Data
Bugs code. Additional file providing the WinBUGs code and input data for the MTC model.
Data
Sensitivity Analysis (1). Additional file providing outcomes of the sensitivity analysis conducted on the continuous ACR measure.
Data
Baseline Demographics. Mean Baseline Demographics of randomized controlled trials for anti-TNF agents.
Data
Sensitivity Analysis (2). Additional file providing outcomes of the sensitivity analysis conducted on the risk ratio scale.
Article
Full-text available
Background: The licensing of direct-acting antivirals heralds a new era in the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1. We undertook a mixed treatment comparison to examine the relative efficacy among current treatments for HCV. Methods: A systematic literature review identified relevant studies. Meta-analyses were planned in treatment-n...
Article
A number of tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα) antagonists (anti-TNFα) are available to treat rheumatoid arthritis. All of these have demonstrated considerable efficacy in placebo controlled trials, but few head-to-head comparisons exist to date. This work's objective is to estimate the relative efficacy among licensed anti-TNFs in patients who have h...
Article
We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of universal infant rotavirus (RV) vaccination compared to current standard of care of "no vaccination". Two RV vaccines are currently licensed in Ireland: Rotarix and RotaTeq. A cohort model used in several European countries was adapted using Irish epidemiological, resource utilisation and cost data. The base c...
Article
Weight changes are common in aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) and postmortem findings suggest a relation between lower body mass index (BMI) and increased AD brain pathology. In the current multicenter study, we tested whether lower BMI is associated with higher core AD brain pathology as assessed by cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)-based biological mar...

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