Contents
What is a time-to-event analysis?
Survival analysis, or more generally, time-to-event analysis, refers to a set of methods for analyzing the length of time until the occurrence of a well-defined end point of interest.
What are reasons for the need of special methods of analysis for time-to-event data?
In addition to calculating relative effect estimates, they can also be used to predict survival time, hazard rates and mean and median survival times. They can also be used to make absolute risk predictions over time and to plot covariate-adjusted survival curves.
What are time-to-event outcomes?
Time-to-event outcomes take account of whether an event takes place and also the time at which the event occurs, such that both the event and the timing of the event are important. For example, in cancer a cure may not be possible, but it is hoped that a new intervention will increase the duration of survival.
What is a time to event?
Survival analysis, or more generally, time-to-event analysis, refers to a set of methods for analyzing the length of time until the occurrence of a well-defined end point of interest. The occurrence of a well-defined event such as patient mortality is often a primary outcome in medical research.
What causes missing data in a time to event analysis?
Traditional regression methods also are not equipped to handle censoring, a special type of missing data that occurs in time-to-event analyses when subjects do not experience the event of interest during the follow-up time. In the presence of censoring, the true time to event is underestimated.
What makes time to event ( TTE ) data unique?
What is unique about time-to-event (TTE) data? Time-to-event (TTE) data is unique because the outcome of interest is not only whether or not an event occurred, but also when that event occurred. Traditional methods of logistic and linear regression are not suited to be able to include both the event and time aspects as the outcome in the model.
What are the methodological considerations of time to event?
There are 4 main methodological considerations in the analysis of time to event or survival data. It is important to have a clear definition of the target event, the time origin, the time scale, and to describe how participants will exit the study. Once these are well-defined, then the analysis becomes more straight-forward.
When does interval censored data occur in survival analysis?
Interval-censored data occurs when the event is observed, but participants come in and out of observation, so the exact event time is unknown. Most survival analytic methods are designed for right-censored observations, but methods for interval and left-censored data are available. What is the question of interest?