A correlated frailty model for analysing risk factors in bilateral corneal graft rejection for Keratoconus: a Bayesian approach.

There are many unknown causes that increase the rate of corneal graft rejection. In bilateral cases, some of these unknown causes are common, and some are individual factors. In this paper, we use a correlated frailty model to analyse risk factors for bilateral corneal graft in Keratoconus. Applying the piecewise constant baseline hazard model, we have performed a Bayesian analysis of the correlated frailty model using the Markov chain Monte Carlo method. The correlated frailty model and the shared frailty model are compared by deviance information criterion. The results show more accurate and better fit for the correlated frailty model. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.