Association Analysis of Imperfectly Recalled Health Conditions among Childhood Cancer Survivors

Music City Center 

The Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) is an enriching resource for survivorship research. It provides valuable information on the incidence and prevalence of various health conditions and the ages at their first occurrence. However, the data may exhibit partial incompleteness due to survivors' challenges in recalling the exact onset age, leading to interval censoring. A complicated cancer treatment received, which potentially affects their memory, together with the evident fact of memory fading with time, makes the censoring informative. We propose a model where the probability of not recalling the onset age is influenced by the time elapsed since the onset of GHD and radiotherapy to the brain. This talk proposes a Cox regression model. The model introduces a novel semi-parametric inference for estimating regression parameters and such data's baseline hazard (or distribution). To demonstrate the method's applicability, we apply it to the analysis of the time to deficiency of growth hormones using data from the CCSS.