How to handle mortality when investigating length of hospital stay and time to clinical stability

Table 1 Description of methods evaluated using simulated data

Estimator	Description
$1 - Ŝ_{d i s} (t)$	Complement of the Kaplan-Meier estimator of hospital discharge, obtained by censoring those patients who died at their time of death
${\hat{C I}}_{d i s} (t)$	Estimate of cumulative incidence function of hospital discharge, obtained by treating in-hospital mortality as a competing risk
$1 - Ŝ_{d i s}^{R} (t)$	Complement of the KM estimator of hospital discharge, obtained by removing those patients who died
$1 - Ŝ_{d i s}^{W} (t)$	Complement of the KM estimator of hospital discharge, obtained by censoring those patients who died at the longest recorded LOS (30 days)

ISSN: 1471-2288