Survival Analysis EPH 651 – Assignment 1

2. Kaplan-Meier Plot

| - Censored Observations

3. From the plot above, the median survival time is 30 months, i.e., 50% of the patients
survive at least to 30 months, 50% have died by 30 months.

4. The 2-year survival rate is approximately 65%. This means that by 2 years 35% of the
patients had died, 65% were still alive.
5. 5/12 – that is the number of patients known to be alive at 24 months is not an adequate
representation of the 2 year survival rate; it underestimates the actual survival rate
because it doesn’t consider the experience of the censored individuals and the impact that
their “known” survival (until censor) adds to the cumulative probability of survival.

In a similar way, 5/8 – the number of “known” living patients as a proportion of the total of
those known to be alive plus those known to be dead, also underestimates the cumulative
survival probability by not considering some measure of “incremental survivability” (i.e.
estimated conditional probability) attributable to the censored patients.

6. Survival rate – that proportion (% or probability) of patients surviving at a given time

(calculated from the sorted event table, or read off of the KM survival plot).

Median survival time – is the time for which 50% of the patients have a longer survival
time, and 50% have a shorter survival time.

7. In general the estimated 2-year mortality rate is equal to [1- (2 year survival rate)]. For
this data set the 2-year mortality rate is approximately 35%. It is that probability of death
occurring by 24 months.

8. The overall death rate is the number of patients dead / the total exposure in person-
months; For this data set it is the following:
Exposure:
dead patients: 1x5 + 1x20.2 + 1x21.1 + 1x29.9 + 1x33.1 = 109.3 person-months

living (censored) patients: 3.9 + 9.8 + 11.0 + 18.0 + 24.7 + 28.0 + 30.3 = 125.7 p-m

Overall HR = dead / exposure( p-m)

= 5/(109.3+125.7)
= 5/235
= .02127

HR1st year (1)

dead: 5.0 p-m

living: 3.9 + 9.8 + 11.0 + 7x12 = 108.7 p-m

HR1st year = 1 = 1/113.7

= .0088
HR 2nd year (2)

dead: 8.2 + 9.1 = 17.3 p-m

living: 18 + 5x12 = 78 p-m

HR2nd year = 2 = 2/95.7

= .0209

So the average death rate is greater in the second year.