I ssue 5
Volume 2
Year 2015
URL http://goo.gl/QDSB5B
#Kidney
KONNECTI ON
Editor: Tejas Desai | Chief: Tushar Vachharajani | Free subscription by @ https: / / goo.gl/ PTVJuo
hospitalization, symptomatic
improvement, etc. Survival
analyses have two characteristics
? 1) time to event and 2)
censoring. We?ll talk about each
in further detail soon.
In a survival analysis, study
participants are followed until a
specified period of time or until
the occurrence of the specified
event, whichever is earlier. The
time from study entry (or
randomization) to the occurrence
of the outcome event is called
the ?time to event?or ?survival
time?. However, some
participants may not experience
the outcome event until the end
of follow-up period. These
patients provide what is termed
censored observations. This is
Patient 1: 10
Patient 4: 12*
Patient 2: 12*
Patient 5: 7
Patient 3: 3
Patient 6: 5*
death.
As you can see, survival analyses are
an essential part of biomedical
statistics. You?ve probably come
across them in the medical literature;
hopefully you have a better handle on
how to interpret the results. It is
important to familiarize oneself with
the basic concepts of this analysis to
interpret and critically analyze the
published literature.