Acta
Medica Medianae
Vol. 42
Number 1, Januar, 2003
UDK 61
YU ISSN 0365-4478
Contact:
Dragan Bogdanović
Institut za zaštitu zdravlja u Nišu,
Braće Taskovic, 18000 Niš, Srbija i Crna Gora
e-mail:izzz-ni s@bankerinter.net
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SURVIVAL ANALVSIS - LIFE TABLES
Velizar Stanišić, Dragan
Bogdanović, Zoran Jančić i Svetlana Stević
Institut za zaštitu
zdravlja u Nišu
In many studies the variable that is of interest to us is the time that
would lapse before an event takes place. This event can be death or death
from some particular disease; that is why analyses of such data are called
survival analyses. An example of such a study can be a clinic examination of
a new kind of therapy with malign tumors whose prognosis is unfavorable. In
such an examination the final occurrence is death or remission. The study
may comprise the axamined who were yet to experience the final occurrence at
the time when the analysis was conducted. Though the time till the final
event with these patients is unknown, there are some pieces of information
regarding its value; one of them is that this time must be longer than the
survival time so far. The value that we have available at the moment of the
analysis is called the censured value. The analysis methods must be such as
to be able to use such censured values. Very often many other variables
obtained at the beginning of the examination and survival are mutually
connected so that these variables can be regarded as prognostic.
The analysis methods must be such that they can perform calculations on the
basis of the prognostic variables' distribution in the sample under
examination. Another example of the studies in which the survival analyses
are used is the study of the specific professional mortality in which it is
examined if the group of workers exposed to the polluter exibits a higher
mortality rate in comparison with the mortality of the population it is
apart of. The subjects enter the study as healthy unlike clinic examination
in which the subjects at the begining of the examination already suffer from
some disease. Many of the methods used in the survival analyses are based
upon the life tables described in the paper. Acta Medica Medianae 2003;
42(1):31-42.
Key words: survival analysis, censured value
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