st: Median survival times via Poisson model, using -margins- ?

[graupel75@gmail.com]

Dear 'Listers,

I have found multiple references to calculating median survival times
for sub-populations from Poisson survival models (eg. Kelsey JK,
Whittemore AS, Evans AS, Thompson WD. Methods in observational
epidemiology. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, pgs.
31-3). A general scheme reported is :

We computed mu as the unweighted average of these 18 death rates [Per
categorical from Poisson model]. The risk of death at time t, R(t),
was computed as R(t) = 1 - e ^-(mu*t), where t was in years. Median
survival was computed by finding the value of t satisfying the
relation, R(t) = 1 - e ^-(mu * t) = 0.5.

I suspect *anything* is possible using -margins- but am stymied on how
to get there with confidence intervals for the median times.

A (not very interesting or well-modelled) example:

***** Start example *****
use http://www.pauldickman.com/survival/diet, clear

gen survdays = dox - doe
gen survyear = survdays/365.25
stset survyear, failure(chd == 1) id(id)

stsplit, at(fail)

collapse (sum) survyear chd, by(hieng job)
sum surv, detail

nbreg chd hieng i.job, exposure(survyear) irr

// margins

***** End example *****

Any thoughts on how to predict median survival times with 95% CIs for
the three levels of 'job' at say, hieng ==1?

cheers-
Andrew Lover

______________________________________________
Epidemiologist
Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research (CIDER)
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health
National University of Singapore
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