Generalized accelerated failure time spatial frailty model for arbitrarily censored data

Haiming Zhou (), Timothy Hanson and Jiajia Zhang
Additional contact information
Haiming Zhou: Northern Illinois University
Timothy Hanson: University of South Carolina
Jiajia Zhang: University of South Carolina

Lifetime Data Analysis: An International Journal Devoted to Statistical Methods and Applications for Time-to-Event Data, 2017, vol. 23, issue 3, No 8, 495-515

Abstract: Abstract Flexible incorporation of both geographical patterning and risk effects in cancer survival models is becoming increasingly important, due in part to the recent availability of large cancer registries. Most spatial survival models stochastically order survival curves from different subpopulations. However, it is common for survival curves from two subpopulations to cross in epidemiological cancer studies and thus interpretable standard survival models can not be used without some modification. Common fixes are the inclusion of time-varying regression effects in the proportional hazards model or fully nonparametric modeling, either of which destroys any easy interpretability from the fitted model. To address this issue, we develop a generalized accelerated failure time model which allows stratification on continuous or categorical covariates, as well as providing per-variable tests for whether stratification is necessary via novel approximate Bayes factors. The model is interpretable in terms of how median survival changes and is able to capture crossing survival curves in the presence of spatial correlation. A detailed Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is presented for posterior inference and a freely available function frailtyGAFT is provided to fit the model in the R package spBayesSurv. We apply our approach to a subset of the prostate cancer data gathered for Louisiana by the surveillance, epidemiology, and end results program of the National Cancer Institute.

Keywords: Interval-censored data; Heteroscedastic survival; Linear dependent tailfree process; Spatial data; Stratified AFT model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10985-016-9361-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:lifeda:v:23:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s10985-016-9361-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10985

DOI: 10.1007/s10985-016-9361-4

Access Statistics for this article

Lifetime Data Analysis: An International Journal Devoted to Statistical Methods and Applications for Time-to-Event Data is currently edited by Mei-Ling Ting Lee

More articles in Lifetime Data Analysis: An International Journal Devoted to Statistical Methods and Applications for Time-to-Event Data from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().