Testing the Independence of Recurrent Event Process and Terminal Event Time

• Main Authors: Li-Hsin Chen, 陳力新
• Other Authors: 張淑惠
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/04396540434681063905

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 流行病學研究所 === 96 === Recurrent event data arise commonly in longitudinal follow-up studies. During the follow-up period, the recurrent event process could be precluded by a terminal event, such as death. For example, schizophrenia patients may experience repeated hospitalizations related to their schizophrenic symptoms until death or end of study. In the analysis of the recurrent event process, the terminal event (e.g. death) can be regarded as the dependent censoring of the recurrent event process. In literature, frailty models are often applied to tackling the correlation between the recurrent event process and the terminal event. Alternatively, when the terminal event time is the major outcome in the analysis, recurrent events can be considered as serial biological markers for predicting the occurrence of the terminal event. Therefore, the concept of the predictive hazard ratio (Day et al., 1997) can be employed to form the test of the independence of the recurrent event process and the terminal event time. The properties of the proposed test statistic are studied by simulation.