Informative censoring in relative survival

Abstract

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, we review the existing methods for estimation in relative survival, demonstrate their deficiencies, and propose weighting to correct both the recently introduced net survival estimator and the Ederer I estimator. Using simulations and real cancer registry data, we evaluate the magnitude of the informative censoring problem. We clarify the assumptions behind the reviewed methods and provide guidance to their usage in practice.

Keywords: informative censoring; inverse probability weighting; net survival; relative survival ratio.