On induced dependent censoring for quality adjusted lifetime (QAL) data in a simple illness-death model

摘要

It is well known that the Kaplan-Meier estimate of QAL data leads to a biased estimate dueto the induced dependence between the QAL and censoring time in the QAL scale. However,the issue of induced dependent censoring in the QAL scale remains less understood. Wepresent a formal study of this induced dependence in the context of a simple illness-deathmodel. The bias of the Kaplan-Meier estimate of the QAL distribution has been investigated.