• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.29 no.7
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• pp.1231-1246
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• 2016

Cause-specific hazard model (Prentice et al., 1978) and subdistribution hazard model (Fine and Gray, 1999) are mostly used for the right censored survival data with competing risks. Some other models for survival data with competing risks have been subsequently introduced; however, those models have not been popularly used because the models cannot provide reliable statistical estimation methods or those are overly difficult to compute. We introduce simple and reliable competing risk regression models which have been recently proposed as well as compare their methodologies. We show how to use SAS and R for the data with competing risks. In addition, we analyze survival data with two competing risks using five different models.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.1209-1216
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• 2015

Competing-risks events are often observed in a clustered clinical study such as a multi-center clinical trial. We propose a joint modelling approach via a shared frailty term for competing risks survival data from a cluster. For the inference we use the hierarchical likelihood (or h-likelihood), which avoids an intractable integration. We derive the corresponding h-likelihood procedure. The proposed method is illustrated via the analysis of a practical data set.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1193-1196
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• 2016

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the commonest malignancy in the lower gastrointestinal tract in both men and women. It is the third leading cause of cancer-dependent death in the world. In Iran the incidence of colorectal cancer has increased during the last 25 years. Materials and Methods: In this article we analyzed the survival of 447 colorectal patients of Taleghani hospital in Tehran using parametric competing-risks models. The cancers of these patients were diagnosed during 1985 - 2012 and followed up to 2013. The purpose was to assess the association between survival of patients with colorectal cancer in the presence of competing-risks and prognostic factors using parametric models. The analysis was carried out using R software version 3.0.2. Results: The prognostic variables included in the model were age at diagnosis, tumour site, body mass index and sex. The effect of age at diagnosis and body mass index on survival time was statistically significant. The median survival for Iranian patients with colorectal cancer is about 20 years. Conclusions: Survival function based on Weibull model compared with Kaplan-Meier survival function is smooth. Iranian data suggest a younger age distribution compared to Western reports for CRC.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.555-562
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• 2016

Interval censored data often occur in an observational study where the subject is followed periodically. Instead of observing an exact failure time, two inspection times that include it are available. There are several methods to analyze interval censored failure time data (Sun, 2006). However, in the presence of competing risks, few methods have been suggested to estimate covariate effect on interval censored competing risk data. A sub-distribution hazard model is a commonly used regression model because it has one-to-one correspondence with a cumulative incidence function. Alternatively, Klein and Andersen (2005) proposed a pseudo-value approach that directly uses the cumulative incidence function. In this paper, we consider an extension of the pseudo-value approach into the interval censored data to estimate regression coefficients. The pseudo-values generated from the estimated cumulative incidence function then become response variables in a generalized estimating equation. Simulation studies show that the suggested method performs well in several situations and an HIV-AIDS cohort study is analyzed as a real data example.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.379-393
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• 2020

A terminal event such as death may censor an intermediate event such as relapse, but not vice versa in semi-competing risks data, which is often seen in medicine, public health, and epidemiology. We propose a Weibull regression model with a normal frailty to analyze semi-competing risks data when all three transition times of the illness-death model are possibly interval-censored. We construct the conditional likelihood separately depending on the types of subjects: still alive with or without the intermediate event, dead with or without the intermediate event, and dead with the intermediate event missing. Optimal parameter estimates are obtained from the iterative quasi-Newton algorithm after the marginalization of the full likelihood using the adaptive importance sampling. We illustrate the proposed method with extensive simulation studies and PAQUID (Personnes Agées Quid) data.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.357-371
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• 2007

For the time-to-failure data with competing risks, cumulative incidence functions (CIFs) are commonly estimated using nonparametric methods. If the cases of events due to the cause of primary interest are infrequent relative to other cause of failure, nonparametric methods may result in rather imprecise estimates for CIF. In such cases, Bryant et al. (2004) suggested to model the cause-specific hazard of primary interest parametrically, while accounting for the other modes of failure using nonparametric estimator. We represented the semiparametric cumulative incidence estimator and extended to the model of Weibull and log-normal distribution. We also conducted simulations to access the performance of the semiparametric cumulative incidence estimators and to investigate the impact of model misspecification in log-normal cause-specific hazard model.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.15
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• pp.6253-6255
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• 2014

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is considered to be a main cause of malignancy-related death in the world, being commonly diagnosed in both men and women. It is the third leading cause of cancer dependent death in the world and there are one million new cases diagnosed per year. In Iran the incidence of colorectal cancer has increased during the last 25 years and it is the fifth cause of cancer in men and the third in women. Materials and Methods: In this article we analyzed the survival of 475 colorectal patients of Taleghani hospital in Tehran with the semi-parametric competing-risks model. Results: There were 55% male cases and at the time of the diagnosis most of the patients were between 48 and 67years old. The probability of a patient death from colorectal cancer with survival of more than 25 years was about 0.4. Body mass index, height, tumour site and gender had no influence. Conclusions: According to these data and by using semi-parametric competing-risks method, we found out that only age at diagnosis has a significant effect on these patient survival time.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.29 no.7
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• pp.1311-1327
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• 2016

We propose a multi-state model for analyzing semi-competing risks data with interval-censored or missing intermediate events. This model is an extension of the 'illness-death model', which composes three states, such as 'healthy', 'diseased', and 'dead'. The state of 'diseased' can be considered as an intermediate event. Two more states are added into the illness-death model to describe missing events caused by a loss of follow-up before the end of the study. One of them is a state of 'LTF', representing a lost-to-follow-up, and the other is an unobservable state that represents the intermediate event experienced after LTF occurred. Given covariates, we employ the Cox proportional hazards model with a normal frailty and construct a full likelihood to estimate transition intensities between states in the multi-state model. Marginalization of the full likelihood is completed using the adaptive Gaussian quadrature, and the optimal solution of the regression parameters is achieved through the iterative Newton-Raphson algorithm. Simulation studies are carried out to investigate the finite-sample performance of the proposed estimation procedure in terms of the empirical coverage probability of the true regression parameter. Our proposed method is also illustrated with the dataset adapted from Helmer et al. (2001).

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.92-98
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• 2017

The rapid growth of engineering technology and the emergence of systemized and large-scale engineering systems have resulted in complexity and uncertainty throughout the lifecycle activities of engineering systems. This complex and large-scale engineering system consists of numerous components, but system failure can be caused by failure of any one of a number of components. There is a real difficulty in managing such a complex and large-scale system as a part. In order to efficiently manage the system and have high reliability, it is necessary to structure a system with a complex structure as a sub-system. Also, in the case of a system in which cause of failures exist at the same time, it is required to identify the correlation of the components lifetime and utilize it for the design policy or maintenance activities of the system. Competitive risk theory has been used as a theory based on this concept. In this study, we apply the competitive risk theory to the models with combined structure of series and parallel which is the basic structure of most complex engineering systems. We construct a competing risks model and propose a mathematical model of net lifetime and crude lifetime for each cause of failure, assuming that the components consisting a parallel system are mutually dependent. In addition, based on the constructed model, the correlation of cause of failure is mathematically analyzed and the hazard function is derived by dividing into net lifetime and crude lifetime.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.120-125
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• 2006

Since Korean government has implemented the "Number Portability System" in the domestic mobile communications market, mobile communication companies have been striving to hold onto existing customers and at the same time to attract new customers. This paper presents a competing risk model that considers the characteristics of a customer in order to predict the customer's life under the "Number Portability System." Three competing risks considered are pricing policy, quality of communication, and usefulness of service. It was observed that the customers who pay more are less sensitive on pricing policy younger people are less sensitive than older people to the quality of communication and women are more sensitive than men to the degree of usefulness of service. We expect that the result of this study can be used as a guideline for effective management of mobile phone customers under the Number Portability System.