Application of Modified Generalized–Gamma Mixture Cure Model in the Analysis of Ovarian Cancer Data

Abstract

Abstract The modeling and analysis of lifetime for terminal diseases such as cancer is a significant aspect of statistical work. This study considered data from thirty-seven women diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer and hospitalized for care at theDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Focus was on the application of a parametric mixture cure model that can handle skewness associated with survival data – a modified generalized-gamma mixture cure model (MGGMCM). The effectiveness of MGGMCM was compared with existing parametric mixture cure models using Akaike Information Criterion, median time-to-cure and variance of the cure rate. It was observed that the MGGMCM is an improved parametric model for the mixture cure model.