Statistical methodology: IX. Survival analysis

Survival analysis is a group of statistical methods used to analyze data re presenting the time to an event of interest, e.g., the duration of survival after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest or the length of time a patient st ays in the ED. Survival. analysis properly accounts for patients who are lo st to followup and for patients who have not yet experienced the event of i nterest at the end of the study's observation period (censored data). This article acquaints the reader with the terminology methodology, and limitati ons of survival analysis. Specific methods discussed include life tables, t he Kaplan-Meier product limit estimate, the log-rank test, and the multivar iate Cox proportional hazards model.