Informative censoring in relative survival.

With changing the age distribution at the time of cancer diagnosis, the administrative censoring due to study end may be informative. This problem has been mentioned frequently in the relative survival field, and an estimator aiming to correct this problem has been developed. In this paper, existing methods for estimation in relative survival are reviewed, their deficiencies are demonstrated and weighting to correct both the recently introduced net survival estimator and the Ederer I estimator is proposed. Using simulations and real cancer registry data, the magnitude of the informative censoring problem is evaluated. The assumptions behind the reviewed methods are clarified and guidance to their usage in practice is provided.

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