Statistical Analysis
death, stroke, peripheral artery disease, heart failure, diabetes
PERIPHERAL ARTERY DISEASE, ISCHEMIC HEART DISEASE, STROKE, EVENT, VALVULAR HEART DISEASE, SECONDARY, REGRESSION, EVENTS, HEART FAILURE, HYPERTENSION, DIABETES
Baseline characteristics are summarized as frequency with percentage for categorical variables, and the distributions were compared with the χAll outcomes were analyzed as time to first event. Crude event rates (expressed as events per 100 person-years) were calculated with Poisson regression, whereas cumulative incidences were determined with the Kaplan-Meier estimator for all-cause death and with the Aalen-Johansen estimator with death as a competing risk for all other outcomes. The relative risks of outcomes between NT-proBNP subgroups were estimated in the entire study cohort with multivariable cause-specific Cox regression models adjusted for sex, age, body mass index, weekly alcohol consumption, smoking pack-years, estimated glomerular filtration rate, total cholesterol concentration, hypertension, diabetes, previous stroke, heart failure, valvular heart disease, ischemic heart disease, and peripheral artery disease. For primary and secondary outcomes, NT-proBNP was also analyzed as a continuous variable with restricted cubic spline regression (knots located at the 5th, 35th, 65th, and 95th percentiles) in the multivariable Cox models.The relative risks of study outcomes for ILR screening compared with usual care were examined according to NT-proBNP subgroups in cause-specific Cox regression models, with the potential interaction tested by further adding an interaction term to the models. The intention-to-treat principle was applied in the analyses of screening effects. In addition, linear and spline-based models were used to assess the associations between continuous NT-proBNP and the relative risks of primary and secondary outcomes for ILR versus control, for which we employed the Akaike information criterion to find the model with an optimal balance between fit and parsimony.The Cox proportional hazard assumption was tested with scaled Schoenfeld residuals, and any variables violating this were treated with stratification to allow different baseline hazards. All data analyses were performed with R (version 4.1.0, R Core Team). Two-sided values of 