Use of the gibbs sampler to estimate transition rates between grades of coronary disease following cardiac transplantation

Coronary occlusive disease following cardiac transplantation is monitored using serial angiography, and graded on a 3 point scale according to the amount of narrowing observed in major vessels. Disease progression is modelled as a continuous time Markov process. The Gibbs sampler is used to estimate the marginal posterior distributions of the transition rates between grades of disease and from each grade to death.