Statistical analysis of arthroplasty register data

Abstract

Data from arthroplasty registers are often analyzed using survival methods. Several methodological problems exist, for example relating to competing events, non-random censoring, non-proportional hazards and dependent observations. League tables and ranking of specific survival results leds to further methodological difficulties. Most of these problems are, however, well known and a number of methods for dealing successfully with the problems have been developed. These methods are usually accessible in commercially available statistical software packages.