Nonparametric estimation of the Patient Weighted While-Alive Estimand

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ragni, Alessandra, Martinussen, Torben, Scheike, Thomas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Ragni, Alessandra
Martinussen, Torben
Scheike, Thomas
author_facet Ragni, Alessandra
Martinussen, Torben
Scheike, Thomas
contents In clinical trials with recurrent events, such as repeated hospitalizations terminating with death, it is important to consider the patient events overall history for a thorough assessment of treatment effects. The occurrence of fewer events due to early deaths can lead to misinterpretation, emphasizing the importance of a while-alive strategy as suggested in Schmidli et al. (2023). In this study, we focus on the patient weighted while-alive estimand, represented as the expected number of events divided by the time alive within a target window, and develop efficient estimation for this estimand. Specifically, we derive the corresponding efficient influence function and develop a one-step estimator initially applied to the simpler irreversible illness-death model. For the broader context of recurrent events, due to the increased complexity, this one-step estimator is practically intractable due to likely misspecification of the needed conditional transition intensities that depend on a patient's unique history. Therefore, we suggest an alternative estimator that is expected to have high efficiency, focusing on the randomized treatment setting. Additionally, we apply our proposed estimator to two real-world case studies, demonstrating the practical applicability of this second estimator and benefits of this while-alive approach over currently available alternatives.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_03246
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nonparametric estimation of the Patient Weighted While-Alive Estimand
Ragni, Alessandra
Martinussen, Torben
Scheike, Thomas
Methodology
Applications
In clinical trials with recurrent events, such as repeated hospitalizations terminating with death, it is important to consider the patient events overall history for a thorough assessment of treatment effects. The occurrence of fewer events due to early deaths can lead to misinterpretation, emphasizing the importance of a while-alive strategy as suggested in Schmidli et al. (2023). In this study, we focus on the patient weighted while-alive estimand, represented as the expected number of events divided by the time alive within a target window, and develop efficient estimation for this estimand. Specifically, we derive the corresponding efficient influence function and develop a one-step estimator initially applied to the simpler irreversible illness-death model. For the broader context of recurrent events, due to the increased complexity, this one-step estimator is practically intractable due to likely misspecification of the needed conditional transition intensities that depend on a patient's unique history. Therefore, we suggest an alternative estimator that is expected to have high efficiency, focusing on the randomized treatment setting. Additionally, we apply our proposed estimator to two real-world case studies, demonstrating the practical applicability of this second estimator and benefits of this while-alive approach over currently available alternatives.
title Nonparametric estimation of the Patient Weighted While-Alive Estimand
topic Methodology
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.03246