Logistic Model Case Study 1: Predicting Cause of Death

Abstract

Consider the randomized trial of estrogen for treatment of prostate cancer⁶⁰ described in Chapter 8. In this trial, larger doses of estrogen reduced the effect of prostate cancer but at the cost of increased risk of cardiovascular death. Kay²³³ did a formal analysis of the competing risks for cancer, cardiovascular, and other deaths. It can also be quite informative to study how treatment and baseline variables relate to the cause of death for those patients who died.²⁵⁸ We subset the original dataset of those patients dying from prostate cancer (n = 130), heart or vascular disease (n = 96), or cerebrovascular disease (n = 31). Our goal is to predict cardiovascular death (cvd, n = 127) given the patient died from either cvd or prostate cancer. Of interest is whether the time to death has an effect on the cause of death, and whether the importance of certain variables depends on the time of death. We also need to formally test whether the data reductions and pretransformations in Chapter 8 are adequate for predicting cause of death.