A Study of the Cure Rate Model with Case Weights and Time-Dependent Weights

• Main Author: Datta, Aditi
• Other Authors: Ali, Ayesha
• Language: en
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Cure Rate Model
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10214/5923

The proportional hazard (PH) cure rate model and the marginal structural Cox model (MSCM) are two broad areas used in analysing survival models with longitudinal data. Cure rate models were introduced to deal with survival models in the presence of a cure fraction and marginal structural models were introduced to adjust for time- ependent confounders through time-dependent weighting in longitudinal studies. However, few studies have tried to combine these two areas in building cure rate models in the presence of time-dependent covariates and time-dependent confounders. This thesis proposes an extension of the maximum likelihood estimation procedure for the PH cure rate model by incorporating (i) case weights, (ii) time-dependent covariates, and (iii) time-dependent weights in the presence of time-dependent covariates and time-dependent confounders into the model. Further, this thesis compares the performance of the PH cure rate model with case weights to the standard unweighted PH cure rate model through simulation studies. Results of these studies suggest that adding case weights in the PH cure rate model improves the estimation of the latency parameter when the sample size is relatively small.