Survival models and an application

ABSTRACT The objective of this study is to examine the survival models and describing the data obtained in a particular field by a suitable model. In the first section, the goal of the study was described by comparing the methods used in survival analysis. The second section gives general information about the data types and the functions used in survival analysis. In the third section, Exponential, Gompertz, Makeham, Gamma, Weibull and Lognormal distributions which are the parametric methods used frequently in survival analysis, are examined in order. In the fourth section, the nonparametric methods, which are Kaplan-Meier product limit and Life table methods, were investigated. In the fifth section of the study, the data obtained were grouped in a convenient way and examined by using Kaplan-Meier product limit method. The related data were taken from Ege University Faculty of Medicine, Branch of Radiation Oncology and contains information about survival data and type of tumor belonging to NSCLC patients. The differences in two groups were researched by logrank and Wilcoxon tests. In the last section, the results of the application are discussed. Using Kaplan- Meier product limit method discovers the differences between the levels of variables measured in classification level and the survival times of the patients according to NSCLC are investigated.