Comparative Analysis of Accelerated Failure Time Models and the Assessment of Risk Factors Influencing Survival Time of Cardiovascular Patients: A Case Study in Kaduna, Nigeria

Abstract

A primary focus of Survival analysis in medicine is modeling time to surviving of a particular disease. In this paper, survival analysis was carried out on the cardiovascular disease data modeling time to surviving the disease. The data was gotten from Barau-Dikko teaching hospital Kaduna, Nigeria.  Accelerated Failure Time (AFT) models like Weibull AFT model, Logistic AFT model, Log-normal AFT model,Log-logistic AFT model and Exponential AFT model are considered to be used for modeling the time to surviving cardiovascular diseases . Models selection criteria were used as a guide to unravel the best model for modeling cardiovascular diseases. The test for assumption of proportionality was conducted; the result revealed that the data violated the assumption of proportionality. Hence guarantee   the use of accelerated failure time models. Based on the result from accelerated failure time models, the  lognormal AFT model out-performed the other models since it has the lowest AIC and the highest log-likelihood value with 1022.23 and -47.82  respectively.