Statistical modelling of repeated and multivariate survival data

Abstract

The emphasis of this thesis lies on complex survival data and on the modelling of this kind of data. Statistical models are developed or adapted and applied to five different real data sets, which all contain repeated censored measurements. To take into account the correlation between these repeated data, a frailty is considered in all statistical analysis used. Extensions of and alternatives for frailty models are considered. The centre-effect on survival after bone marrow transplantation is studied in chapter 2. Models that are able to take into account a time-dependent frailty are proposed and compared. In chapter 3 survival analysis approaches are used for modelling an ecological capture-recapture data set. In chapter 4, the emphasis lies on the frailty model used in a genetic context. Our model is applied on age at onset of Huntington disease. Chapter 5 concerns the estimation of the correlation between processes with frailties. The approach is applied on the Dutch part of the data set from the Caprie trial, involving cardiac, cerebral and peripheral atherosclerosis. In chapter 6, the point of interest is the marginal survivor curve in different simulated balanced and unbalanced longitudinal situations. Finally, in chapter 7 a general summary can be found.UBL - phd migration 201