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Survival attributable to an exposure
Author(s) -
Cox Christopher,
Chu Haitao,
Muñoz Alvaro
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/sim.3705
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , attributable risk , generalization , survival analysis , intervention (counseling) , medicine , hazard , hazard ratio , population , proportional hazards model , survival function , statistics , computer science , environmental health , mathematics , confidence interval , surgery , geography , mathematical analysis , chemistry , organic chemistry , psychiatry , archaeology
In the survival analysis context, when an intervention either reduces a harmful exposure or introduces a beneficial treatment, it seems useful to quantify the gain in survival attributable to the intervention as an alternative to the reduction in risk. To accomplish this we introduce two new concepts, the attributable survival and attributable survival time, and study their properties. Our analysis includes comparison with the attributable risk function as well as hazard‐based alternatives. We also extend the setting to the case where the intervention takes place at discrete points in time, and may either eliminate exposure or introduce a beneficial treatment in only a proportion of the available group. This generalization accommodates the more realistic situation where the treatment or exposure is dynamic. We apply these methods to assess the effect of introducing highly active antiretroviral therapy for the treatment of clinical AIDS at the population level. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.