Longitudinal structural mixed models for the analysis of surgical trials with noncompliance.

ABSTRACT: Patient noncompliance complicates the analysis of many randomized trials seeking to evaluate the effect of surgical intervention as compared with a nonsurgical treatment. If selection for treatment depends on intermediate patient characteristics or outcomes, then 'as-treated' analyses may be biased for the estimation of causal effects. Therefore, the selection mechanism for treatment and/or compliance should be carefully considered when conducting analysis of surgical trials. We compare the performance of alternative methods when endogenous processes lead to patient crossover. We adopt an underlying longitudinal structural mixed model that is a natural example of a structural nested model. Likelihood-based methods are not typically used in this context; however, we show that standard linea

SUBMITTER: Sitlani CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3876882 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature