Nonparametric estimation of the distribution of gap times for recurrent events

Abstract

In many longitudinal studies, information is collected on the times of different kinds of events. Some of these studies involve repeated events, where a subject or sample unit may experience a well-defined event several times throughout their history. Such events are called recurrent events. In this paper, we introduce nonparametric methods for estimating the marginal and joint distribution functions for recurrent event data. New estimators are introduced and their extensions to several gap times are also given. Nonparametric inference conditional on current or past covariate measures is also considered. We study by simulation the behavior of the proposed estimators in finite samples, considering two or three gap times. Our proposed methods are applied to the study of (multiple) recurrence times in patients with bladder tumors. Software in the form of an R package, called survivalREC, has been developed, implementing all methods.