R help - Jul 2008 - competing risk model with time dependent covariates

Dear R users,

is there a way, I mean a package, to perform a competing risk model which can
handle time dependent covariates ?

my main covariate (additional treatment to patients) appears not to follow the
proportional hazards assumption, its effect being observed after one year of
treatment but not before (this is expected / makes sense on a clinical point of
view). SO I was planning to use a time dependent Cox model with 2 time intervals
for patients < > 1 year etc...

However, a large number of patients dies from treatment related complications of
unrelated to the disease and the treatment (elderly patients) so to analyze the
effect of my covariate of interest on disease free survival and relapse
incidence, I d like to use a competing risk model such as the Gray CMPRSK.

My problem is that I cannot have multiple "lines" for the same patient
with this package (for time dep covariates 2 or 3 lines with same Id /UPN).
How can I manage this !!!???
Any help will be greatly appreciated 
Thanks
Yours sincerely


 


Philippe Guardiola


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