1

Deriving life expectancy from FLIPI index data for FLIPI(3) High Risk
This updated analysis attempts to transform deaths per year into average years of survival weighted by deaths per year

It looks like the 65% of follicular lymphoma patients with a high risk FLIPI index that die within the first ten years will live an average of 4.18 years. This analysis is entirely based on the referenced paper and does not take into account the better prognosis since the advent of rituximab.


Cumulative number of deaths comes from Number of events for high risk. From Figure 4 shown above. The last three columns were adjusted for missing data by interpolating from the graph.
Months 12 - 120 converted to Years 1-10

01   02   03   04   05   06   07   08   09   10 end of year
54  109  152  202  229  245  260  281  300  315 cumulative deaths
89   77   69   58   53   50   46   42   38   35 survival % 
54   55   43   50   27   16   15   21   19   15 incremental deaths

Converting deaths per year into average years of survival. This is the part that I am least certain of.

Average years of survival weighted by deaths per year
 54 x  1 =  54
 55 x  2 = 110
 43 x  3 = 129
 50 x  4 = 200
 27 x  5 = 135
 16 x  6 =  96
 15 x  7 = 105
 21 x  8 = 168
 19 x  9 = 171
 15 x 10 = 150
-----------------
315       1318 / 315 = 4.18
polcott
  • 187
  • 7
  • Although your edits depersonalized the question, it's really more of a statistics question than medical. Therefore, I'm reopening it and simultaneously migrating it to Cross Validated. – Carey Gregory Feb 23 '22 at 22:31
  • @CareyGregory I had already asked the question there. I think that it is very important for people with follicular lymphoma to know what life expectancy is associated with their FLIPI score. It looks like 4.18 years is a very accurate very conservative average life expectancy for patients with FLIPI(3). Prior to my analysis I thought that I only had 11 months to live and my oncologist had no idea how accurate or inaccurate my simplistic analysis was. – polcott Feb 23 '22 at 22:52
  • @IanCampbell This is another copy of my same question. I posted it on Medical Sciences and Cross Validated concurrently and then the moderator migrated my Medical Sciences question to Cross Validated. The original answer was to a much poorer quality question. I wanted to know the life expectancy years for FLIPI(3) patients. **It looks like my own computation of 4.18 years is both accurate and conservative.** – polcott Feb 23 '22 at 23:35
  • @polcott Cross-posting can be seen as a bit rude, see: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/is-cross-posting-a-question-on-multiple-stack-exchange-sites-permitted-if-the-qu – Bryan Krause Feb 23 '22 at 23:49
  • @BryanKrause I was asking for two entirely different perspectives, medical and mathematical. It does no good if the math is right and the application to medicine is wrong, likewise the reverse. – polcott Feb 23 '22 at 23:51
  • @polcott They look almost perfectly copy-pasted to me. Quoting Jeff's answer "Just to be 100% clear, copy-pasting a question across sites with no changes is considered abusive behavior." The accepted answer writes, regarding the rare case a question may be cross-posted: "Even then, however, it's best to tailor your question to each site. Ideally, you should link to the question on the other site and explain what you hope to learn from asking another community." – Bryan Krause Feb 23 '22 at 23:54
  • @BryanKrause I needed to have the answer from a mathematical and medical perspective. If the dogma says this is unreasonable then the dogma needs to be updated. – polcott Feb 23 '22 at 23:57
  • 2
    If you wanted two perspectives the way to approach that would be to craft the two questions separately. Instead you've copy-pasted exactly the same question. It also doesn't seem like you've read anything about the medical sciences site, because if you had you'd see that asking personal medical advice there is entirely off-topic. What possibly remains is a mathematical question about survival analysis, which I do think could be allowable on medical sciences even though it's probably better here, but it's the exact same question just posted two places to increase the audience. – Bryan Krause Feb 24 '22 at 00:01
  • @BryanKrause **Is my analysis medically sound and mathematically sound?** requires two different perspectives for the exact same question, that cannot be provided by either forum separately. – polcott Feb 24 '22 at 00:03

0 Answers0