An inverse-probability-weighted approach to the estimation of successive duration times under left-truncation and right-censoring

In incident cohort studies, survival data often include subjects who have had an initiate event at recruitment and may potentially experience two successive events (first and second) during the follow-up period. Since the second duration process becomes observable only if the first event has occurred, left-truncation and dependent censoring arise if the two duration times are correlated. To confront the two potential sampling biases, Chang and Tzeng (2006) provided an inverse-probability-weighted (IPW) approach for estimating the joint probability function of successive duration times. In this note, an alternative IPW approach is proposed. A simulation study is conducted to compare the two IPW approaches.