Week 11: More advanced Methods - Survival Analysis Flashcards
Survival time includes:
- Time to an event
2. The time starting from a defined point to the occurrence of a given event
An event can be:
- Death
- Disease occurrence
- Disease recurrence
- Recovery
- Other experience of study interest such as adverse drug reaction, development of a new disease
Special Features in Survival Time Data:
- rarely normally distributed
- often skewed
- typically with many early events and relatively few late ones
Survival Time: Censored Observations -
Those who have not yet reached the terminal event by the end of the study
- patient has not (yet) experienced the event by the time of the close of the study
- a patient is lost to follow-up during the study period
- a patient experiences a different event that makes further follow-up impossible
Issues with the censored observations in analysis?
these censored survival times will underestimate the true (but unknown) time to the event because it will occur beyond the end of the study
T/F Special methods of analysis are needed to account for censored data
True
Collective term for the methods of analysis for survival data invented specifically to deal with time to an event problems
Survival analysis
Examples of survival analysis:
- hazard ratio
- Kaplan-Meier curve
- median survival time
- log-rank test
- Cox Model
Survival analysis answers questions relating to what?
- relating to time to an event such
ex: How long does it take for the patient to get better?
ex: Do patients get better faster under treatment A or under treatment B?
survival analysis provides the statistical methods that can be used to do what?
analyze the survival time data that are not normally distributed but skewed in the presence of censored observations
Kaplan-Meier Curve -
- widely used in clinical research to visualize the estimate of the survival over time
- shows what the probability of an event is at a certain time interval
What is on the x and y axis for a Kaplan-Meier Curve?
horizontal axis (x-axis) displays ‘time’; the vertical axis (y-axis) ‘proportion surviving’
What does it mean that a Kaplan-Meier Curve is a step function?
as the cumulative survival remains the same until the day another person experiences the event
What is on the x and y axis for a Kaplan-Meier Curve with censored data?
the horizontal axis (x-axis) displays ‘time’; the vertical axis (y-axis) ‘proportion surviving’
T/F Kaplan-Meier Curve with censored data is a step function.
True
How are censored observations indicated on the K-M curve?
As tick marks
T/F Censored observations terminate the interval.
False, they do not terminate the interval
Kaplan-Meier Curve for Two Groups -
- visualize the difference between two survival curves
- study a question like “Do patients get better faster under treatment A or under treatment B?”
Now is Median Survival Time estimated?
- estimated as the smallest survival time for which the survival function is less than or equal to 0.5
1. . finding the 50% mark on the proportion axis
2. drawing a horizontal line at 50% to find the crossing point with the K-M curve
3. drawing a vertical line at the crossing point down to the time axis to read time
How is mean survival time estimated?
as the area under the survival curve
Mean survival time may not be the best estimate for what type of samples?
for the samples of survival times are frequently highly skewed