Survival Analysis Part I: Basic concepts and first analyses

作者：Taane Gregory Clark, Mike J Bradburn, Sharon Love, Douglas G. Altman · 发表于：British Journal of Cancer · 年份：2003 · DOI：10.1038/sj.bjc.6601118 · 被引用次数：1060 · 研究领域：Statistical Methods and Inference、Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life、Statistical Methods in Clinical Trials

In many cancer studies, the main outcome under assessment is the time to an event of interest. The generic name for the time is survival time , although it may be applied to the time ‘survived’ from complete remission to relapse or progression as equally as to the time from diagnosis to death. If the event occurred in all individuals, many methods of analysis would be applicable. However, it is usual that at the end of follow-up some of the individuals have not had the event of interest, and thus their true time to event is unknown. Further, survival data are rarely Normally distributed, but are skewed and comprise typically of many early events and relatively few late ones. It is these features of the data that make the special methods called survival analysis necessary.