Survival Analysis - Breast Cancer

Abstract. In this study we used the parametric survival approach to analyze the survival time of African American breast cancer patients. In research about the survival time of patients, the Cox Proportional Hazard model, a semiparametric method, is primarily used, but this approach does not rely on the distributional assumptions. The parametric method is more consistent with a theoretical approach compared to a semi-parametric approach. We observe that the survival time of African American breast cancer patients follows the Weibull Probability Distribution. First, we fitted the model to represent the survival ability of the general population (African American women diagnosed with breast cancer), treating everyone the same. Second, we incorporate other patient-specific covariate factors affecting the survival time to predict lifetime of a particular patient, given that her information is fully known.