Analysis of recurrent events with associated informative censoring: application to HIV data
Date
2020-06
Authors
Ejoku, Jonathan
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Strathmore University
Abstract
In this study, we adapt a commonly used Cox-based model for recurrent events; the Prentice, Williams and Peterson Total -Time (PWP-TT) that has been largely used under the assumption of non-informative censoring and evaluate it under an informative censoring setting. Empirical evaluation was undertaken with the aid of the semi-parametric framework for recurrent events suggested by (Huang and Wang, 2004) where a subject speci c latent variable is used to model the association between the recurrent event and hazard of the failure time. All implementations were made in R Studio software, using the reReg package (Chiou and Huang, 2019) and the method in the reReg function set to 'cox.HW'. For validation we used HIV data from a typical HIV care setting in Kenya. Results show that the PWP-TT model generally t the data well, with a comparison to the Andersen-Gill method showing similar estimates, while the ordinary Cox model estimates were too unreliable
Description
A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Statistical Sciences (MSc. SS) at Strathmore University
Keywords
Recurrent events, Loss to follow-up, HIV, Informative censoring