A Comparison of Frailty and Other Models for Bivariate Survival Data

TLDR: This article compares theFrailty models for bivariate data with the models based on bivariateexponential and Weibull distributions and considers Bayesian inference using different models.

Abstract: Multivariate survival data arise when eachstudy subject may experience multiple events or when study subjectsare clustered into groups Statistical analyses of such dataneed to account for the intra-cluster dependence through appropriatemodeling Frailty models are the most popular for such failuretime data However, there are other approaches which model thedependence structure directly In this article, we compare thefrailty models for bivariate data with the models based on bivariateexponential and Weibull distributions Bayesian methods providea convenient paradigm for comparing the two sets of models weconsider Our techniques are illustrated using two examplesOne simulated example demonstrates model choice methods developedin this paper and the other example, based on a practical dataset of onset of blindness among patients with diabetic Retinopathy,considers Bayesian inference using different models