Title | Assessing the causal effect of organ transplantation on the distribution of residual lifetime. |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2013 |
Authors | Vock, David M., Anastasios A. Tsiatis, Marie Davidian, Eric B. Laber, Wayne M. Tsuang, Ashley Finlen C Copeland, and Scott M. Palmer |
Journal | Biometrics |
Volume | 69 |
Issue | 4 |
Pagination | 820-9 |
Date Published | 2013 Dec |
ISSN | 1541-0420 |
Keywords | Adolescent, Adult, Age Distribution, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Causality, Data Interpretation, Statistical, Humans, Internationality, Life Expectancy, Lung Diseases, Lung Transplantation, Middle Aged, Outcome Assessment, Health Care, Survival Rate, Young Adult |
Abstract | Because the number of patients waiting for organ transplants exceeds the number of organs available, a better understanding of how transplantation affects the distribution of residual lifetime is needed to improve organ allocation. However, there has been little work to assess the survival benefit of transplantation from a causal perspective. Previous methods developed to estimate the causal effects of treatment in the presence of time-varying confounders have assumed that treatment assignment was independent across patients, which is not true for organ transplantation. We develop a version of G-estimation that accounts for the fact that treatment assignment is not independent across individuals to estimate the parameters of a structural nested failure time model. We derive the asymptotic properties of our estimator and confirm through simulation studies that our method leads to valid inference of the effect of transplantation on the distribution of residual lifetime. We demonstrate our method on the survival benefit of lung transplantation using data from the United Network for Organ Sharing. |
DOI | 10.1111/biom.12084 |
Alternate Journal | Biometrics |
Original Publication | Assessing the causal effect of organ transplantation on the distribution of residual lifetime. |
PubMed ID | 24128090 |
PubMed Central ID | PMC3865173 |
Grant List | R01CA051962 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States R37AI031789 / AI / NIAID NIH HHS / United States R37 AI031789 / AI / NIAID NIH HHS / United States P01CA142538 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States P01 CA142538 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States R01 CA085848 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States R01 CA051962 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States 234-2005-370011C / / PHS HHS / United States R01CA085848 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States |
Assessing the causal effect of organ transplantation on the distribution of residual lifetime.
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