Checking stationarity of the incidence rate using prevalent cohort survival data
Checking stationarity of the incidence rate using prevalent cohort survival data
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DOI：
10.1002/sim.2326
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发表时间：
2006-05-30
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
Zhang, Xun
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Asgharian, Masoud;Wolfson, David B.;Zhang, Xun
当生存数据作为一项具有随访的流行队列研究的一部分收集时，所招募的病例已经经历了其初始事件，例如疾病的发病，因此仅部分观察到发病过程。然而，有充分的理由对潜在发病率过程的某些特征感兴趣，例如它是否平稳。事实上，流行病学家经常使用的发病率和流行率之间众所周知的关系要求发病率的平稳性才能证明其有效性。此外，统计学家可以利用平稳性的发生率过程通过提高效率的估计在一个普遍的队列生存分析。此外，对于医学和其他研究人员来说，发病率是否稳定本身就很重要。我们在此提出了潜在发病率过程平稳性的必要和充分条件，该过程仅使用来自流行队列研究的生存观察，可能经过正确审查。通过比较基于部分观察到的发病时间和随访生存数据的两个Kaplan-Meier估计值的图，这导致了一种简单的图形方法来检查潜在发病时间的平稳性。我们用我们的方法来讨论1971年至1991年间加拿大痴呆症的发病率。版权所有(c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd。
When survival data are collected as part of a prevalent cohort study with follow-up, the recruited cases have already experienced their initiating event, say onset of a disease, and consequently the incidence process is only partially observed. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for interest in certain features of the underlying incidence process, for example whether or not it is stationary. Indeed, the well known relationship between incidence and prevalence, often used by epidemiologists, requires stationarity of the incidence rate for its validity. Also, the statistician can exploit stationarity of the incidence process by improving the efficiency of estimators in a prevalent cohort survival analysis. In addition, whether the incident rate is stationary is often in itself of central importance to medical and other researchers. We present here a necessary and sufficient condition for stationarity of the underlying incidence process, which uses only survival observations, possibly right censored, from a prevalent cohort study with follow-up. This leads to a simple graphical means of checking for the stationarity of the underlying incidence times by comparing the plots of two Kaplan-Meier estimates that are based on partially observed incidence times and follow-up survival data. We use our method to discuss the incidence rate of dementia in Canada between 1971 and 1991. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.