Statistical Analysis
HCC
REGRESSION
All data analysis was performed using SAS statistical software version 9.4 (SAS Institute) and was conducted on June 5, 2023. A 2-sided hypothesis test was used with a significance level set at .05.We reported the distribution of demographics, comorbidities, and hepatic treatment and median and IQR of CCI score between the antidepressant use and nonuse groups. Cox proportional hazards regression was performed to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% CIs for associations between antidepressant use before and after HCC diagnosis and the rates of overall and cancer-specific mortality, with adjustments for demographic factors, comorbidities, and hepatic treatment. Both crude and adjusted HRs were reported to provide a comprehensive understanding of the associations. 95% CIs that did not include 1 indicate statistical significance. Dose-response analyses were conducted to examine whether the duration of antidepressant use had a differential association with overall and cancer-specific mortality rates. We categorized the duration of antidepressant use 2 groups: short-term users (1 to 90 days) and long-term users (>90 days) because the practice of providing refillable prescriptions for up to 3 months to patients with chronic conditions in Taiwan; other studies also used such duration lengths.To address the type I error that may result from multiple comparisons and to provide more reliable results, we adjusted the 