Question

Explain the concept of survival analyses and why they are used in clinical research (1pt). Give TWO examples of a situation where survival analysis would be useful (1pt) and also which statistical analysis tools are utilized (1pt) in evaluating survival analyses.

Answer 1

Solution:-

1. Concept of Survival Analysis and why they are used in clinical research.

Ans: - Survival Analysis is the analysis or detailed examination of survival time data, where survival time is the time for occurrence of a specific event (time to respond to an event, time to death etc.) taking non-negative values.

Analysis regarding:-

Ø What proportion of a population which will survive past a certain time.

Ø Those that survive, at what rate will they die or fail, etc.

Survival analyses are used in clinical research because Survival analysis provides a great tool for analyzing the time to an event type of data, which is very common in any clinical trial.

2. Two example of a situation where survival analysis will be useful.

Ø Time from manufacture of a component to component failure.

Ø Time from HIV diagnosis to AIDS development.

3. There are several tools available to analyze time-to-event curves such as:-

Ø Cox proportional hazards.

Ø Log-rank.

Ø Wilcoxon two sample tests.

But, The Cox proportional hazards model has been the most widely used statistical tool which is utilize in evaluating survival analyses because of its applicability to a wide variety of clinical studies.