The Challenge of Time-to-Event Analysis for Multiple Events: A Guided Tour From Time-to-First-Event to Recurrent Time-to-Event Analysis.

ABSTRACT: Clinical trials often compare a treatment to a control group concerning multiple possible combined time-to-event endpoints like hospital-free survival. Thereby, the first endpoint may occur more than once ("recurrent"), whereas the second endpoint is absorbing. Inclusion of all observed events in the analysis can increase the power and provide a more complete picture of the disease but it needs more sophisticated methodology. We give a stepwise guidance on how to extend the simple time-to-first event model to complex multistate methodology, where multiple events are incorporated. We thereby consider non- and semiparametric methods and show how they are related. Special attention is given to the prerequisites of the models, for example, the Markov property, and their interpretation. Due to

SUBMITTER: Schmeller S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12848661 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature