Journal club: STEP-HFpEF and symptom endpoints — a second dataset

On the subject in the title: Journal club: STEP-HFpEF and symptom endpoints — a second dataset Working notes rather than a conclusion.

Posting a small dataset on step-hfpef and symptom endpoints. It is mine, it is uncontrolled, and the method is stated so it can be discounted appropriately.

What I would like is not agreement but a second dataset collected by someone with no stake in mine. If one exists I would rather read it than argue for this one.

The opening post put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.

Sessions on negative or null results are consistently the most instructive and the hardest to get anyone to attend.

I would rather say I do not know than round it up to an answer.

Marking my uncertainty on step-hfpef and symptom endpoints explicitly. I am confident about the direction, much less confident about the size, and not confident at all that it generalises past the case in the first post.

If someone has run step-hfpef and symptom endpoints properly I would rather read that than my own reconstruction of it. Posting mine only because the thread has gone quiet.

The baseline characteristics table is the single most useful page for the questions that get asked here, because it tells you who the result applies to.

It is the kind of thing that is obvious once and never again.

What I would want before treating step-hfpef and symptom endpoints as settled: the method, the sample, and whether anyone tried to find the opposite result. Two of the three are usually missing.

Noted, and thank you for writing it out rather than summarising it.

Confirming post #6 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.

Where the group cannot agree, record the disagreement rather than resolving it by seniority. The recorded disagreement is more honest and more useful later.

Practical answer on step-hfpef and symptom endpoints, since the theoretical one is upthread: do the simplest check first, write down the result, and only then decide whether the complicated explanation is needed. It usually is not.

I read post #9 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.

Before the thread moves on from step-hfpef and symptom endpoints — what is the sample size behind the claim? I am not being difficult; I have seen the same figure quoted from an n of four and from an n of four hundred.

Post #11 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.

The most common failure mode is spending fifty minutes on the effect size and ten on the population. Reversing that ratio would improve most sessions.

I keep a log for step-hfpef and symptom endpoints specifically because my memory of it turned out to be systematically wrong in one direction. Six weeks of notes cost nothing and settled it.

For anyone finding this later: the short answer on step-hfpef and symptom endpoints is that it depends on one thing, and the rest of the thread is people identifying which thing.