Cure Rate Model with Clustered Interval Censored Data

초록

Ordinary survival analysis cannot be applied when a significant fraction of patients may be cured. A cure rate model is the combination of cure fraction and survival model and can be applied to several types of cancer. In this article, the cure rate model is considered in the interval censored data with a cluster effect. A shared frailty model is introduced to characterize the cluster effect and an EM algorithm is used to estimate parameters. A simulation study is done to evaluate the performance of estimates. The proposed approach is applied to the smoking cessation study in which the event of interest is a smoking relapse. Several covariates (including intensive care) are evaluated to be effective for both the occurrence of relapse and the smoke quitting duration.

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