- The Kaplan-Meier Plot
- What is survival analysis? You’ll see what it is, when to use it and how to run and interpret the most common descriptive survival analysis method, the Kaplan-Meier plot and its associated log-rank test for comparing the survival of two or more patient groups, e.g. those on different treatments. You’ll learn about the key concept of censoring.
- The Cox Model
- This week you’ll get to know the most commonly used survival analysis method for incorporating not just one but multiple predictors of survival: Cox proportional hazards regression modelling. You’ll learn about the key concepts of hazards and the risk set. From now and until the end of this course, there’ll be plenty of chance to run Cox models on data simulated from real patient-level records for people admitted to hospital with heart failure. You’ll see why missing data and categorical variables can cause problems in regression models such as Cox.
- The Multiple Cox Model
- You’ll extend the simple Cox model to the multiple Cox model. As preparation, you’ll run the essential descriptive statistics on your main variables. Then you’ll see what can happen with real-life public health data and learn some simple tricks to fix the problem.
- The Proportionality Assumption
- In this final part of the course, you’ll learn how to assess the fit of the model and test the validity of the main assumptions involved in Cox regression such as proportional hazards. This will cover three types of residuals. Lastly, you’ll get to practise fitting a multiple Cox regression model and will have to decide which predictors to include and which to drop, a ubiquitous challenge for people fitting any type of regression model.
