Survival Analysis Commons^™

Nonparametric Estimation Of The Case Fatality Ratio With Competing Risks Data: An Application To Severe Acute Respiratory Syndome (Sars) , Nicholas P. Jewell, Xiudong Lei, A. C. Ghani, C. A. Donnelly, G. M. Leung, L. M. Ho, B. Cowling, A. J. Hedley

U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series

For diseases with some level of associated mortality, the case fatality ratio measures the proportion of diseased individuals who die from the disease. In principle, it is straightforward to estimate this quantity from individual follow-up data that provides times from onset to death or recovery. In particular, in a competing risks context, the case fatality ratio is defined by the limiting value of the sub-distribution function, associated with death, at infinity. When censoring is present, however, estimation of this quantity is complicated by the possibility of little information in the right tail of of the sub-distribution function, requiring use of …