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Survival analysis—time-to-event data and censoring

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Fig. 1: Probability density functions for two distributions commonly used in survival analysis.
Fig. 2: A Kaplan–Meier analysis of a hypothetical 12-month study with 10 subjects.
Fig. 3: Treating censored times as observed event times results in underestimates of survival and reduced sensitivity in detecting differences between groups.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Surgery & Public Health, Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Tanujit Dey, Stuart R. Lipsitz, Zara Cooper & Quoc-Dien Trinh

  2. Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Martin Krzywinski

  3. Department of Statistics, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA

    Naomi Altman

Authors
  1. Tanujit Dey
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  2. Stuart R. Lipsitz
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  3. Zara Cooper
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  4. Quoc-Dien Trinh
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  5. Martin Krzywinski
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  6. Naomi Altman
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Correspondence to Martin Krzywinski.

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Dey, T., Lipsitz, S.R., Cooper, Z. et al. Survival analysis—time-to-event data and censoring. Nat Methods 19, 906–908 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-022-01563-7

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