Predictive equations not always overestimate the resting energy expenditure in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients

Re-analysis A better approach might have been plotting each value of mREE and pREE with a slope regression and identity line. As an example, according to the available data into the Siirala paper, for Harris Benedict equation the regression line would be y = 1,43x 77,22 (r2 0,91). Slope higher than 1,0 means that higher values of kcal from the mREE are associated with greater differences than Harris Benedict values on the contrary to other papers from Sherman [2] and for our preliminary data in 10 patients with ALS [3] who also were totally dependent on invasive ventilatory support. In these reports, line regression at high values of mREE shift very closed to the identity line. But in the analysis of measurement method comparison data, neither the correlation coefficient nor the techniques, such as regression analysis, are appropriate. Bland & Altman suggest replacing these misleading analyses by a graphical method to compare two measurement techniques. This method is simple both to do and to interpret [4]. However, a new study with much more patients will be nessesary to demostrate the advantages of this method. In fact, any statistics are not of much use (n 5) to start with. A combination of statistical tools was proposed [5].