Survival analysis of time-to-event data in respiratory health research studies

Abstract

This article provides a review of techniques for the analysis of survival data arising from respiratory health studies. Popular techniques such as the Kaplan-Meier survival plot and the Cox proportional hazards model are presented and illustrated using data from a lung cancer study. Advanced issues are also discussed, including parametric proportional hazards models, accelerated failure time models, time-varying explanatory variables, simultaneous analysis of multiple types of outcome events and the restricted mean survival time, a novel measure of the effect of treatment.

Keywords: Kaplan-Meier estimate; accelerated failure time model; proportional hazards model; survival analysis.