Determination of French influenza outbreaks periods between 1985 and 2011 through a web-based Delphi method
Determination of French influenza outbreaks periods between 1985 and 2011 through a web-based Delphi method
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DOI：
10.1186/1472-6947-13-138
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发表时间：
2013-12-24
影响因子：
3.5
通讯作者：
Falchi, Alessandra
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Debin, Marion;Souty, Cecile;Falchi, Alessandra
背景：评估统计模型确定的流感流行时期的准确性对于提高实时症状监测系统中使用的算法的性能非常重要。在缺乏可靠的金标准的情况下，这是一个很难解决的问题。本研究的目的是建立基于专家的法国流感流行开始和结束的确定方法。方法：向 288 名合格的流感专家提出了三轮国际网络德尔菲调查。五十七名 (20%) 专家完成了三轮研究。专家们受邀在 32 个流感季节时间序列图上指出流感流行的开始和结束周，这些图是使用法国前哨网络（流感样疾病发病率）的数据和 WHO-FluNet 的病毒学数据绘制的。提出的 32 个时间序列图中，有 26 个对应于 1985 年至 2011 年间观察到的每个法国流感季节。每轮提出两次六个流感季节，以衡量专家反应之间的差异。结果：我们获得了 88% (23/26) 流行期的一致结果。在两轮或三轮（取决于季节）中，答案围绕模式聚集，并且内部控制证明了答案的良好再现性。病毒学数据似乎并未对答案或共识水平产生重大影响，除了病毒学和发病数据时间之间存在重大不匹配的季节。结论：通过这项国际网络德尔菲调查，我们对大多数分析的法国流感流行曲线获得了可重复、稳定和一致的结果。详细的曲线以及德尔菲研究的估计值可能是评估统计疫情检测方法性能的有用工具，以便对其进行优化。
Background: Assessing the accuracy of influenza epidemic periods determined by statistical models is important to improve the performance of algorithms used in real-time syndromic surveillance systems. This is a difficult problem to address in the absence of a reliable gold standard. The objective of this study is to establish an expert-based determination of the start and the end of influenza epidemics in France.Methods: A three-round international web-based Delphi survey was proposed to 288 eligible influenza experts. Fifty-seven (20%) experts completed the three-rounds of the study. The experts were invited to indicate the starting and the ending week of influenza epidemics, on 32 time-series graphs of influenza seasons drawn using data from the French Sentinelles Network (Influenza-like illness incidence rates) and virological data from the WHO-FluNet. Twenty-six of 32 time-series graphs proposed corresponded to each of the French influenza seasons observed between 1985 and 2011. Six influenza seasons were proposed twice at each round to measure variation among expert responses.Results: We obtained consensual results for 88% (23/26) of the epidemic periods. In two or three rounds (depending on the season) answers gathered around modes, and the internal control demonstrated a good reproducibility of the answers. Virological data did not appear to have a significant impact on the answers or the level of consensus, except for a season with a major mismatch between virological and incidence data timings.Conclusions: Thanks to this international web-based Delphi survey, we obtained reproducible, stable and consensual results for the majority of the French influenza epidemic curves analysed. The detailed curves together with the estimates from the Delphi study could be a helpful tool for assessing the performance of statistical outbreak detection methods, in order to optimize them.