Joint analysis of recurrent event data with a dependent terminal event

Recurrent event data frequently occur in many longitudinal studies, and the observation on recurrent events could be stopped by a terminal event such as death. This paper considers joint modeling and analysis of recurrent event and terminal event data through a common subject-specific frailty, in which the proportional intensity model is used for modeling the recurrent event process and the additive hazards model is used for modeling the terminal event time. Estimating equation approaches are developed for parameter estimation and asymptotic properties of the resulting estimators are established. In addition, some procedures are presented for model checking. The finite sample behavior of the proposed estimators is evaluated through simulation studies, and an application to a heart failure study is provided.