These are data from one of the first successful trials of adjuvant chemotherapy for colon cancer. Levamisole is a low-toxicity compound previously used to treat worm infestations in animals; 5-FU is a moderately toxic (as these things go) chemotherapy agent. There are two records per person, one for recurrence and one for death
colon
data(cancer, package="survival")| id: | id |
| study: | 1 for all patients |
| rx: | Treatment - Obs(ervation), Lev(amisole), Lev(amisole)+5-FU |
| sex: | 1=male |
| age: | in years |
| obstruct: | obstruction of colon by tumour |
| perfor: | perforation of colon |
| adhere: | adherence to nearby organs |
| nodes: | number of lymph nodes with detectable cancer |
| time: | days until event or censoring |
| status: | censoring status |
| differ: | differentiation of tumour (1=well, 2=moderate, 3=poor) |
| extent: | Extent of local spread (1=submucosa, 2=muscle, 3=serosa, 4=contiguous structures) |
| surg: | time from surgery to registration (0=short, 1=long) |
| node4: | more than 4 positive lymph nodes |
| etype: | event type: 1=recurrence,2=death |
JA Laurie, CG Moertel, TR Fleming, HS Wieand, JE Leigh, J Rubin, GW McCormack, JB Gerstner, JE Krook and J Malliard. Surgical adjuvant therapy of large-bowel carcinoma: An evaluation of levamisole and the combination of levamisole and fluorouracil: The North Central Cancer Treatment Group and the Mayo Clinic. J Clinical Oncology, 7:1447-1456, 1989.
DY Lin. Cox regression analysis of multivariate failure time data: the marginal approach. Statistics in Medicine, 13:2233-2247, 1994.
CG Moertel, TR Fleming, JS MacDonald, DG Haller, JA Laurie, PJ Goodman, JS Ungerleider, WA Emerson, DC Tormey, JH Glick, MH Veeder and JA Maillard. Levamisole and fluorouracil for adjuvant therapy of resected colon carcinoma. New England J of Medicine, 332:352-358, 1990.
CG Moertel, TR Fleming, JS MacDonald, DG Haller, JA Laurie, CM Tangen, JS Ungerleider, WA Emerson, DC Tormey, JH Glick, MH Veeder and JA Maillard, Fluorouracil plus Levamisole as an effective adjuvant therapy after resection of stage II colon carcinoma: a final report. Annals of Internal Med, 122:321-326, 1991.