Flexible estimation of differences in treatment-specific recurrent event means in the presence of a terminating event.

ABSTRACT: In this article, we consider the setting where the event of interest can occur repeatedly for the same subject (i.e., a recurrent event; e.g., hospitalization) and may be stopped permanently by a terminating event (e.g., death). Among the different ways to model recurrent/terminal event data, the marginal mean (i.e., averaging over the survival distribution) is of primary interest from a public health or health economics perspective. Often, the difference between treatment-specific recurrent event means will not be constant over time, particularly when treatment-specific differences in survival exist. In such cases, it makes more sense to quantify treatment effect based on the cumulative difference in the recurrent event means, as opposed to the instantaneous difference in the rates. We pr

SUBMITTER: Pan Q 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4465273 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature