Case Study in Parametric Survival Modeling and Model Approximation

Abstract

Consider the random sample of 1000 patients from the SUPPORT study, ²⁴¹ described in Section 3.10. In this case study we develop a parametric survival time model (accelerated failure time model) for time until death for the acute disease subset of SUPPORT (acute respiratory failure, multiple organ system failure, coma). We eliminate the chronic disease categories because the shapes of the survival curves are different between acute and chronic disease categories. To fit both acute and chronic disease classes would require a log-normal model with σ parameter that is disease-specific.