BACKGROUND Despite its benefits, it is uncommon to apply the nested case-control design in diagnostic research. We aim to show advantages of this design for diagnostic accuracy studies. METHODS We used data from a full cross-sectional diagnostic study comprising a cohort of 1295 consecutive patients who were selected on their suspicion of having deep vein thrombosis (DVT). We draw nested case...

Benichou and Gail (1995, Biometrics 51, 182-194) describe methods for estimating the absolute risk of developing disease given a set of covariate values over a specified time interval from a case-control study within a cohort. The methods are most suitable for unmatched case-control studies, and are restricted to categorical covariates. Expanding on methods for estimating relative mortality fro...