Sarcoidosis in World Trade Center-Exposed Firefighters

[摘要] There are two grounds for questioning the premise by Hena et al¹ that the sarcoidosis cases, whose follow-up they reported on in a recent issue of CHEST (January 2018), were caused by World Trade Center (WTC) disaster exposure: observer effect and lack of direct causal evidence. The underappreciated issue of observer effect in distorting incidence computation is vividly illustrated in Welch’s (Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here's Why)² recounting of a melanoma pseudo-epidemic in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory prompted by a single melanoma diagnosis in an employee.

[学科分类] 呼吸医学