Approximate Methodologies for Proportional Mortality Analyses in Epidemiologic Studies Involving Competing Risks of Death Regardless of their Covariance Structure
✍ Scribed by B. Raja Rao; Gary M. Marsh
- Book ID
- 102759110
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1987
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 826 KB
- Volume
- 29
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0323-3847
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✦ Synopsis
The present paper discusses methodologies for proportional mortality analyses in epidemiologic studies in which an individual is exposed simultaneously t o several (say M ) risks of death which compete for his life. A general situation is considered where nothing is known about the dependence or covariance structure among the risks. The available data consist only ofthe number of deaths in each stratum of the test population, but not the number of individuals a t risk. A general class of approximate simultaneous confidence and prediction intervals are developed which provide overall risk assessnient of the competing risk factors in many biomedical and epidemiologic studies. Our paper describes how, under reasonable assumptions, asymptotically precise inferences may be based on proportional mortality analyses in order to estimate the indirectly and the externally standardized cause-specific risk measures RSMRi and RSRRi respectively.
The tuberculosis mortality dnta of KUPPER, e t al., (1978) and the respiratory cancer mortality data of ENTERLIXE and MARSH (1983) are utilized to illustrate the usefulness of our results. Methodologies are presented to construct simultaneous confidence intervals for RSMRi involving SPMRi andsimultaneous prediction intervals for RSRRi involving S,PMRi. Both Scheffb-and Sidak-Types of simultaneous intervals are constructed for H competing risks of death. As a particular cdse if J I = 1, i.e., if the risks of death may be assumed to be independent, as is usually done in proportional mortality analyses, the Scheffb and Sidak confidence intervals become identical and are narrower than of KUPPER e t al., (1978). In this sense, our paper generalizee the methodologies of proportional mortality analyses in two directions, first to discuss the situation involving competing risks. and second to obtain narrower confidence intervals.