Nonparametric Statistical Methods Using R

Chapter 6

Time to Event Analysis

6.1 Introduction

In survival or reliability analysis the investigator is interested in time to an event of interest as the outcome variable. Often in a clinical trial the goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of a new treatment at prolonging survival; i.e. to extend the time to the event of death. It is usually the case that at the end of followup a portion of the subjects in the trial have not experienced the event; for these subjects the outcome variable is censored. Similarly, in engineering studies, often the lifetimes of mechanical or electrical parts are of interest. In a typical experimental design, lifetimes of these parts are recorded along with covariates (including design variables). Often the lifetimes ...