Plot time from event to observation end for censored and uncensored time.

plotEventObservationDependence(studyPopulation, title = NULL, fileName = NULL)

Arguments

studyPopulation: An object created using the createStudyPopulation() function.
title: Optional: the main title for the plot
fileName: Name of the file where the plot should be saved, for example 'plot.png'. See the function ggplot2::ggsave() for supported file formats.

Value

A ggplot object. Use the ggplot2::ggsave() function to save to file in a different format.

Details

This plot shows whether there is a difference in time between (first) event and the observation period end for periods that are ' censored' and those that are 'uncensored'. By 'censored' we mean periods that end before we would normally expect. Here, we define periods to be uncensored if they end at either the study end date (if specified), database end date (i.e. the date after which no data is captured in the database), or maximum age (if specified). All other periods are assumed to be censored.

As proposed by Farrington et al., by comparing the two plots, we can gain some insight into whether the censoring is dependent on the occurrence of the event.

References

Farrington P, Whitaker H, Ghebremichael Weldeselassie Y (2018), Self-controlled case series studies: A modelling guide with R, Taylor & Francis