Statistical analysis
All analyses were conducted with SPSS Statistics, Version 27 (IBM Corp.,
Armonk, NY) and R version 3.6.1 (The R Foundation for Statistical
Computing, Vienna, Austria). Continuous variables are reported as mean ±
standard deviation or median (interquartile range [IQR]), depending
on normality, and categorical variables are reported as frequency
(percent). Group comparisons were conducted with independent samplest -tests or Mann-Whitney U tests for continuous variables and
Chi-Squared or Fisher’s Exact tests for categorical variables, as
appropriate. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used to compare related
samples. Spearman correlations were used to compare two continuous
variables. Double-robust linear regression analyses were conducted to
compare cases and controls on the aortic measurement variables with
adjustment for the factors in the propensity score model (age, sex,
race, body surface area, and hypertension) to account for any residual
confounding that may have been present. A subset of 10 patients (5 cases
and 5 controls) were measured by all three personnel who conducted the
image analysis to evaluate inter-rater reliability using intraclass
correlation coefficients (ICC) based on a single-measurement,
absolute-agreement, and 2-way mixed-effects model.
RESULTS