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Missingness in the Setting of Competing Risks: from Missing Values to Missing Potential Outcomes

  • Epidemiologic Methods (R Maclehose, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

The setting of competing risks in which there is an event that precludes the event of interest from occurring is prevalent in epidemiological research. Unless studying all-cause mortality, any study following up individuals is subject to having a competing risk should individuals die during time period that the study covers. While there are prior papers discussing the need for competing risk methods in epidemiologic research, we are not aware of any review that discusses issues of missing data in a competing risk setting.

Recent Findings

We provide an overview of causal inference in competing risks as potential outcomes are missing, provide some strategies in dealing with missing (or misclassified) event type, and missing covariate data in competing risks. The strategies presented are specifically focused on those that may easily be implemented in standard statistical packages. There is ongoing work in terms of causal analyses, dealing with missing event type information, and missing covariate values specific to competing risk analyses.

Summary

Competing events are common in epidemiologic research. While there has been a focus on why one should conduct a proper competing risk analysis, a perhaps unrecognized issue is in terms of missingness. Strategies exist to minimize the impact of missingness in analyses of competing risks.

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Funding

This work was supported by NIH grants U01 HL121812, U01 AA020793, P30 AI094189, and U24 OD023382.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA

    Bryan Lau & Catherine Lesko

  2. Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Bryan Lau

Authors
  1. Bryan Lau
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  2. Catherine Lesko
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bryan Lau.

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Conflict of Interest

Bryan Lau reports grants from NIH, during the conduct of the study.

Catherine Lesko declares no conflicts of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Epidemiologic Methods

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Lau, B., Lesko, C. Missingness in the Setting of Competing Risks: from Missing Values to Missing Potential Outcomes. Curr Epidemiol Rep 5, 153–159 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40471-018-0142-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40471-018-0142-3

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