title: Methods for bounding the marginal survival distribution.
abstract: For time to event data with many potential failure types, one cannot uniquely determine the distribution of time to a specific event type, or marginal survival distribution, in the case where event types are mutually exclusive. In this paper we discuss several methods for estimating functions that bound the non-identifiable marginal survival distribution in the competing risks problem. We compute and compare bounds for data simulated from two bivariate survival distributions. Results show that the methods provide a suitable estimate of the marginal survival probability when one has specified dependence correctly. Data from a large clinical trial for breast cancer illustrate the methods.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pa 15261, USA.
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Dignam
authors.forename: L A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Weissfeld
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Anderson
mesh_terms: D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D015233:Models, Statistical; D016019:Survival Analysis