R: Create survival curves

survfit {survival}

R Documentation

Create survival curves

Description

This function creates survival curves from either a formula (e.g. the Kaplan-Meier), a previously fitted Cox model, or a previously fitted accelerated failure time model.

Usage

survfit(formula, ...)

Arguments

`formula`	either a formula or a previously fitted model
`...`	other arguments to the specific method

Details

A survival curve is based on a tabulation of the number at risk and number of events at each unique death time. When time is a floating point number the definition of "unique" is subject to interpretation. The code uses factor() to define the set. For further details see the documentation for the appropriate method, i.e., ?survfit.formula or ?survfit.coxph.

A survfit object may contain a single curve, a set of curves (vector), a matrix of curves, or even a 3 way array: dim(fit) will reveal the dimensions. Predicted curves from a coxph model have one row for each stratum in the Cox model fit and one column for each specified covariate set. Curves from a multi-state model have one row for each stratum and a column for each state, the strata correspond to predictors on the right hand side of the equation. The default printing and plotting order for curves is by column, as with other matrices.

Value

An object of class survfit containing one or more survival curves.

Note

Older releases of the code also allowed the specification for a single curve to omit the right hand of the formula, i.e., survfit(Surv(time, status)), in which case the formula argument is not actually a formula. Handling this case required some non-standard and fairly fragile manipulations, and this case is no longer supported.

Author(s)

Terry Therneau