• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.130-142
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• 2018

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to introduce regression method in the presence of competing risks and to show how you can use the method with hypothetical data. Methods: Survival analysis has been widely used in biostatistics division. But the same method has not been utilized in reliability division. Especially competing risks, where more than a couple of causes of failure occur and the occurrence of one event precludes the occurrence of the other events, are scattered in reliability field. But they are not utilized in the area of reliability or they are analysed in the wrong way. Specifically Kaplan-Meier method is used to calculate the probability of failure in the presence of competing risks, thereby overestimating the real probability of failure. Hence, cumulative incidence function is introduced. In addition, sample competing risks data are analysed using cumulative incidence function along with some graphs. Lastly we compare cumulative incidence functions with regression type analysis briefly. Results: We used cumulative incidence function to calculate the survival probability or failure probability in the presence of competing risks. We also drew some useful graphs depicting the failure trend over the lifetime. Conclusion: This research shows that Kaplan-Meier method is not appropriate for the evaluation of survival or failure over the course of lifetime in the presence of competing risks. Cumulative incidence function is shown to be useful in stead. Some graphs using the cumulative incidence functions are also shown to be informative.

• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.56-63
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• 2016

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to point out that the Kaplan-Meier method is not valid to calculate the survival probability or failure probability (risk) in the presence of competing risks and to introduce more valid method of cumulative incidence function. Methods: Survival analysis methods have been widely used in biostatistics division. However the same methods have not been utilized in reliability division. Especially competing risks cases, where several causes of failure occur and the occurrence of one event precludes the occurrence of the other events, are scattered in reliability field. But they are not noticed in the realm of reliability expertism or they are analysed in the wrong way. Specifically Kaplan-Meier method which assumes that the censoring times and failure times are independent is used to calculate the probability of failure in the presence of competing risks, thereby overestimating the real probability of failure. Hence, cumulative incidence function is introduced and sample competing risks data are analysed using cumulative incidence function and some graphs. Finally comparison of cumulative incidence functions and regression type analysis are mentioned briefly. Results: Cumulative incidence function is used to calculate the survival probability or failure probability (risk) in the presence of competing risks and some useful graphs depicting the failure trend over the lifetime are introduced. Conclusion: This paper shows that Kaplan-Meier method is not appropriate for the evaluation of survival or failure over the course of lifetime. In stead, cumulative incidence function is shown to be useful. Some graphs using the cumulative incidence functions are also shown to be informative.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.385-396
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• 2018

Competing risks are commonly encountered in biomedical research. Regression models for competing risks data can be developed based on data routinely collected in hospitals or general practices. However, these data sets usually contain the covariate missing values. To overcome this problem, multiple imputation is often used to fit regression models under a MAR assumption. Here, we introduce a multivariate imputation in a chained equations algorithm to deal with competing risks survival data. Using pseudo-observations, we make use of the available outcome information by accommodating the competing risk structure. Lastly, we illustrate the practical advantages of our approach using simulations and two data examples from a coronary artery disease data and hepatocellular carcinoma data.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.1573-1582
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• 2015

In lifetime data analysis, it is generally known that the lifetimes of test items may not be recorded exactly. There are also situations wherein the withdrawal of items prior to failure is prearranged in order to decrease the time or cost associated with experience. Moreover, it is generally known that more than one cause or risk factor may be present at the same time. Therefore, analysis of censored competing risks data are needed. In this article, we derive the Bayes estimators for the entropy function under the exponential distribution with an unknown scale parameter based on multiply Type II censored competing risks data. The Bayes estimators of entropy function for the exponential distribution with multiply Type II censored competing risks data under the squared error loss function (SELF), precautionary loss function (PLF) and DeGroot loss function (DLF) are provided. Lindley's approximate method is used to compute these estimators.We compare the proposed Bayes estimators in the sense of the mean squared error (MSE) for various multiply Type II censored competing risks data. Finally, a real data set has been analyzed for illustrative purposes.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.711-724
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• 2016

Under variable complex operating environment, various factors can affect the lifetimes of systems. In this research, we study bivariate reliability models having multiple dynamic competing risks. As competing risks, in addition to the natural failure, we consider the increased stress caused by the failure of one component, external shocks, and the level of stress of the working environment at the same time. Considering two reliability models which take into account all of these competing risks, we derive bivariate life distributions. Furthermore, we compare these two models and also compare the distributions of maximum and minimum statistics in the two models.

• 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.