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The analysis of contingency tables with ordinal data: an application to monitoring antibiotic resistance
Author(s) -
Bonetto C.,
Giannerini S.,
Giovagnoli A.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/sim.2447
Subject(s) - contingency table , rationalization (economics) , antibiotics , row , antibiotic resistance , statistics , sensitivity (control systems) , computer science , econometrics , medicine , operations research , mathematics , microbiology and biotechnology , biology , database , philosophy , epistemology , electronic engineering , engineering
Rationalization of antibiotic therapy in the management of infectious diseases is helped by a knowledge of the patterns of sensitivity and resistance of bacteria to antibiotics and their possible changes both in time and from one hospital unit to another. In this paper we present the results regarding the sensitivities of several groups of bacteria and different Units of the S.Orsola‐Malpighi Hospital of Bologna in the period 1995–1997. We apply recent methods of analysis of ordinal contingency tables that rely on stochastic ordering of the rows to test the assumption that a decrease (or increase) in sensitivity of bacteria to specific antibiotics has taken place against the alternative that no such thing has happened. In most cases the results seem to indicate an increase in sensitivity rather than what was expected, namely the opposite. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.