Survival Analysis (eBook)

This greatly expanded second edition of Survival Analysis- A Self-learning Text provides a highly readable description of state-of-the-art methods of analysis of survival/event-history data. This text is suitable for researchers and statisticians working in the medical and other life sciences as well as statisticians in academia who teach introductory and second-level courses on survival analysis. The second edition continues to use the unique 'lecture-book' format of the first (1996) edition with the addition of three new chapters on advanced topics: Chapter 7: Parametric Models Chapter 8: Recurrent events Chapter 9: Competing Risks. Also, the Computer Appendix has been revised to provide step-by-step instructions for using the computer packages STATA (Version 7.0), SAS (Version 8.2), and SPSS (version 11.5) to carry out the procedures presented in the main text. The original six chapters have been modified slightly to expand and clarify aspects of survival analysis in response to suggestions by students, colleagues and reviewers, and to add theoretical background, particularly regarding the formulation of the (partial) likelihood functions for proportional hazards, stratified, and extended Cox regression models.

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This is the second edition of this text on survival analysis, originallypublishedin1996. Asinthe?rstedition,eachch- ter contains a presentation of its topic in "e;lecture-book"e; f- mat together with objectives, an outline, key formulae, pr- tice exercises, and a test. The "e;lecture-book"e; format has a sequence of illustrations and formulae in the left column of eachpageandascriptintherightcolumn. Thisformatallows youtoreadthescriptinconjunctionwiththeillustrationsand formulae that high-light the main points, formulae, or ex- ples being presented. This second edition has expanded the ?rst edition by adding three new chapters and a revised computer appendix. The three new chapters are: Chapter 7. Parametric Survival Models Chapter 8. Recurrent Event Survival Analysis Chapter 9. Competing Risks Survival Analysis Chapter 7 extends survival analysis methods to a class of s- vival models, called parametric models, in which the dist- bution of the outcome (i. e. , the time to event) is speci?ed intermsofunknownparameters. Manysuchparametricmodels are acceleration failure time models, which provide an alt- native measure to the hazard ratio called the "e;acceleration factor"e;. The general form of the likelihood for a parametric model that allows for left, right, or interval censored data is also described. The chapter concludes with an introduction to frailty models. Chapter8considerssurvivaleventsthatmayoccurmorethan once over the follow-up time for a given subject. Such events are called "e;recurrent events"e;.