TY - JOUR T1 - From the authors: JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 972 LP - 973 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00188910 VL - 37 IS - 4 AU - M. Humbert AU - O. Sitbon AU - D. Montani AU - X. Jaïs AU - A. Yaïci AU - D.S. O'Callaghan AU - R. Souza AU - G. Simonneau Y1 - 2011/04/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/37/4/972.abstract N2 - From the authors:We thank R. Wensel and colleagues for their comments on our recent article highlighting survivor bias in prevalent cohorts of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) patients 1. In this rebuttal, we provide information indicating that their analysis of our data and their own retrospective cohort probably suffer from misinterpretation and biases.R. Wensel and colleagues report that a retrospective analysis from seven German pulmonary hypertension centres during 1996–2008 showed better survival in incident patients with idiopathic, familial or anorexigen-associated PAH patients compared to prevalent cases. This statement probably arises due to a misunderstanding of the definition of incident and prevalent cases. As stated in our recently published manuscripts 1–3, incident cases were defined as patients diagnosed with PAH using right-heart catheterisation during the recruitment phase of our registry. By contrast, prevalent cases were defined as patients in whom the diagnosis was made prior to the start of the registry. By definition, the date of diagnosis corresponded to the date of confirmatory right-heart catheterisation. We understand that R. Wensel and colleagues employed a different approach, defining so-called prevalent patients as subjects with a prior diagnosis … ER -