• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.420-443
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• 2012

An Individual-Based Model (IBM) was developed by employing natural and toxic survival rates of individuals to elucidate the community responses of benthic macroin-vertebrates to anthropogenic disturbance in the streams. Experimental models (dose-response and relative sensitivity) and mathematical models (power law and negative exponential distribution) were applied to determinate the individual survival rates due to acute toxicity in stressful conditions. A power law was additionally used to present the natural survival rate. Life events, covering movement, exposure to contaminants, death and reproduction, were simulated in the IBM at the individual level in small (1 m) and short (1 week) scales to produce species abundance distributions (SADs) at the community level in large (5 km) and long (1~2 years) scales. Consequently, the SADs, such as geometric series, log-series, and log-normal distribution, were accordingly observed at severely (Biological Monitoring Working Party (BMWP<10), intermediately (BMWP<40) and weakly (BMWP${\geq}50$) polluted sites. The results from a power law and negative exponential distribution were suitably fitted to the field data across the different levels of pollution, according to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. The IBMs incorporating natural and toxic survival rates in individuals were useful for presenting community responses to disturbances and could be utilized as an integrative tool to elucidate community establishment processes in benthic macroin-vertebrates in the streams.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.31-37
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• 2016

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to evaluate changes in the management and 5-year survival rates of patients with oral cancer in our department over a 30-year period. Materials and Methods: We investigated the patient distributions, treatment methods, method of neck dissection according to cancer stage, and 5-year survival rates for 700 oral cancer patients over the periods of 1982-1996 (256 patients), 1999-2006 (248 patients), and 2007-2011 (196 patients). Results: Stage IV patients were the largest group in all of the time periods evaluated. Although surgery and radiotherapy were the most common methods in all periods (over 50%), the prevalence of patients who underwent concomitant chemoradiotherapy increased from 7.0% to 16.2%. The use of radical neck dissection decreased from 43.0% to 5.3%, while conservative surgical methods increased from 24.1% to 76.3%. Lastly, the overall 5-year survival rate increased from 31.6% to 63.5% during the study period. Conclusion: Although the 5-year survival rate reached the same level as that of other developed countries during the course of our study, most patients continue to come to the hospital with stage IV disease. In order to increase the 5-year survival rate of oral carcinoma, it may be necessary to improve public education and social efforts relevant to early diagnosis.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.339-347
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• 1998

As a part of a study on the development of microbiological methods for petroleum exploration, the distribution of the avarafe survival rate for heterotrophs to various heavy metal ions and hydrocarbons were surveyed and compared by the use of plate count method. In consequence of the avarage survival rate to heavy metal ions(2 hours treatment) and hydrocarbons(1 hour treatment) for heterotrophs isolatinf from soil samples(50cm depth) which located in Doum mountain(A, B and D site) and Aedowon(C site) at Pohang area, the survival rate of heterotrophs for nickel(600ppm), cobalt(500ppm), cadmiun(100ppm), mercury(20ppm), zinc(400 ppm) and lead(500ppm) were 73.7%, 82.6%, 76.8%, 9.5%, 77.8% and 73.6% at A site and 67.9%, 82.5%, 86.0%, 5.8%, 82.5% and 91.7% at B site, 87.8%, 79.8%, 87.5%, 7.0%, 84.2% AND 47.7% AT c SITE, AND 71.8%, 76%, 85.9%, 1,2%, 79.6% AND 88.3% AT D site, respectively. Also the survival rate of heterotrophs from A,B,C and D site to pentane and hexane(each concentration is 20%) were 26.7% and 42.5%, 11.8% and 8.1%, 44.3% and 36.2%, and 12% and 3.5%, respectively. therefore, heterotrophs from B and D site that alternated gravelstone, muddy sandstone and sandstone were higher survival rate to the heavy metal ions than heterotrophs from A site which mainly composed gravelstone. Also, heterotrophs from C site which mainly composed muddy sandstone and once produced natural gas were showed relatively higher survival rate to the heavy metal ions and hydrocarbons than the other sites. Consequently, we confirmed that the distributions of tolerant heterotrophs to heavy metal ions and hydrocarbons were differ from the lithological compositon.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.22
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• pp.9673-9678
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• 2014

Background: Breast cancer is a fatal disease and the most frequently diagnosed cancer in women with an increasing pattern worldwide. The burden is mostly attributed to metastatic cancers that occur in one-third of patients and the treatments are palliative. It is of great interest to determine factors affecting time from cancer diagnosis to secondary metastasis. Materials and Methods: Cure rate models assume a Poisson distribution for the number of unobservable metastatic-component cells that are completely deleted from the non-metastasis patient body but some may remain and result in metastasis. Time to metastasis is defined as a function of the number of these cells and the time for each cell to develop a detectable sign of metastasis. Covariates are introduced to the model via the rate of metastatic-component cells. We used non-mixture cure rate models with Weibull and log-logistic distributions in a Bayesian setting to assess the relationship between metastasis free survival and covariates. Results: The median of metastasis free survival was 76.9 months. Various models showed that from covariates in the study, lymph node involvement ratio and being progesterone receptor positive were significant, with an adverse and a beneficial effect on metastasis free survival, respectively. The estimated fraction of patients cured from metastasis was almost 48%. The Weibull model had a slightly better performance than log-logistic. Conclusions: Cure rate models are popular in survival studies and outperform other models under certain conditions. We explored the prognostic factors of metastatic breast cancer from a different viewpoint. In this study, metastasis sites were analyzed all together. Conducting similar studies in a larger sample of cancer patients as well as evaluating the prognostic value of covariates in metastasis to each site separately are recommended.

• Journal of Pathology and Translational Medicine
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.386-395
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• 2018

Background: Previous studies on synchronous colorectal carcinoma (SCRC) have reported inconsistent results about its clinicopathologic and molecular features and prognostic significance. Methods: Forty-six patients with multiple advanced tumors (T2 or higher category) who did not receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy and who are not associated with familial adenomatous polyposis were selected and 99 tumors from them were subjected to clinicopathologic and molecular analysis. Ninety-two cases of solitary colorectal carcinoma (CRC) were selected as a control considering the distributions of types of surgeries performed on patients with SCRC and T categories of individual tumors from SCRC. Results: SCRC with multiple advanced tumors was significantly associated with more frequent nodal metastasis (p=.003) and distant metastasis (p=.001) than solitary CRC. KRAS mutation, microsatellite instability, and CpG island methylator phenotype statuses were not different between SCRC and solitary CRC groups. In univariate survival analysis, overall and recurrence-free survival were significantly lower in patients with SCRC than in patients with solitary CRC, even after adjusting for the extensiveness of surgical procedure, adjuvant chemotherapy, or staging. Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that tumor multiplicity was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (hazard ratio, 4.618; 95% confidence interval, 2.126 to 10.030; p<.001), but not for recurrence-free survival (p=.151). Conclusions: Findings suggested that multiplicity of advanced T category-tumors might be associated with an increased risk of nodal metastasis and a risk factor for poor survival, which raises a concern about the guideline of American Joint Committee on Cancer's tumor-node-metastasis staging that T staging of an index tumor determines T staging of SCRC.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.43-65
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• 2017

We propose a flexible cure rate survival model by assuming that the number of competing causes of the event of interest has the Poisson distribution and the time for the event follows the gamma-G family of distributions. The extended family of gamma-G failure-time models with long-term survivors is flexible enough to include many commonly used failure-time distributions as special cases. We consider a frequentist analysis for parameter estimation and derive appropriate matrices to assess local influence on the parameters. Further, various simulations are performed for different parameter settings, sample sizes and censoring percentages. We illustrate the performance of the proposed regression model by means of a data set from the medical area (gastric cancer).

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.40-47
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• 1990

The two-sample problem where an experimental treatment is compared with a control is considered. Without making any parametric-model assumptions for the distributions(or survival distributions), a measure for summarizing the differences between the treatment and the control is introduced. A method for constructing a confidence interval for the proposed measure is given in cases of complete and right random censored data. This method is illustrated with two numerical examples.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.459-475
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• 1998

In many clinical trials, we are interested in comparing the failure time distribution of different treatment groups. Because of ethical and economic reasons, clinical trials need to be monitored for early dramatic benefits or potential harmful effects. Prior knowledge, evolving knowledge, statistical considerations, medical judgment and ethical principles are all involved in the decision to terminate a trial early, and thus the monitoring is usually carried out by an independent scientific committee. This paper reviews the recently proposed group sequential testing procedures for clinical trials with survival data. Design considerations of such clinical trials are also discussed. This paper compares the characteristics of each of these methods and provides the biostatisticians with the guidelines for choosing the appropriate group sequential methods in a given situation.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.85-104
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• 1997

Proportional hazards model has been widely used for analyzing survival data. This article reviews some well-known goodness-of-fit tests for proportional hazards model. Simulation studies also provide some insights into the properties of these test statistics across several types of survival distributions and degerees of censorship.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.21
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• pp.9453-9458
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• 2014

Background: Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death for women in the United States. Differences in survival of breast cancer have been noted among racial and ethnic groups, but the reasons for these disparities remain unclear. This study presents the characteristics and the survival curve of two racial and ethnic groups and evaluates the effects of race on survival times by measuring the lifetime data-based half-normal model. Materials and Methods: The distributions among racial and ethnic groups are compared using female breast cancer patients from nine states in the country all taken from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results cancer registry. The main end points observed are: age at diagnosis, survival time in months, and marital status. The right skewed half-normal statistical probability model is used to show the differences in the survival times between black Hispanic (BH) and black non-Hispanic (BNH) female breast cancer patients. The Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazard ratio are used to estimate and compare the relative risk of death in two minority groups, BH and BNH. Results: A probability random sample method was used to select representative samples from BNH and BH female breast cancer patients, who were diagnosed during the years of 1973-2009 in the United States. The sample contained 1,000 BNH and 298 BH female breast cancer patients. The median age at diagnosis was 57.75 years among BNH and 54.11 years among BH. The results of the half-normal model showed that the survival times formed positive skewed models with higher variability in BNH compared with BH. The Kaplan-Meir estimate was used to plot the survival curves for cancer patients; this test was positively skewed. The Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazard ratio for survival analysis showed that BNH had a significantly longer survival time as compared to BH which is consistent with the results of the half-normal model. Conclusions: The findings with the proposed model strategy will assist in the healthcare field to measure future outcomes for BH and BNH, given their past history and conditions. These findings may provide an enhanced and improved outlook for the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer patients in the United States.