Bayesian Survival Analysis

Survival analysis arises in many fields of study including medicine, biology, engineering, public health, epidemiology, and economics. This book provides a comprehensive treatment of Bayesian survival analysis. Several topics are addressed, including parametric models, semiparametric models based on prior processes, proportional and non-proportional hazards models, frailty models, cure rate models, model selection and comparison, joint models for longitudinal and survival data, models with time varying covariates, missing covariate data, design and monitoring of clinical trials, accelerated failure time models, models for mulitivariate survival data, and special types of hierarchial survival models. Also various censoring schemes are examined including right and interval censored data. Several additional topics are discussed, including noninformative and informative prior specificiations, computing posterior qualities of interest, Bayesian hypothesis testing, variable selection, model selection with nonnested models, model checking techniques using Bayesian diagnostic methods, and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms for sampling from the posteiror and predictive distribution