cumulative incidence plot vs survival plot

Hi, I am wondering if anyone can explain to me if cumulative  
incidence (CI) is
just "1 minus kaplan-Meier survival"?

Under what circumstance, you should use
cumulative incidence vs KM survival? If the relationship is just CI =
1-survival, then what difference it makes to use one vs. the other?

And in R how I can draw a cumulative incidence plot.

I know I can make a
Kaplan-Meier survival plot using plot(survfit()), for example:

fit<-survfit(Surv(time,status)~group,data=data)
plot(fit, col=1:2)

How to draw CI plot then?

Thanks very much!

John
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Hi David,

Thanks for responding, and plain text ...(didn't realized I was in  
rich text).

The endpoint is disease recurrence, I was producing a regular KM  
plot of
recurrence-free probability. Then someone recommend using cumulative  
incidence
is preferred because death was censored in the dataset. I did a  
little googling,
I found CI was used often in the context of competing risk. I am  
totally new to
competing risk and trying to understand what competing risk means  
and why CI is
preferred than KM survival in this context. If you could share your  
thoughts
helping me to understand, greatly appreciated.

Searched archive, found people talking about cmprsk package for  
estimating and
plotting CI. would that be the same as the code you suggested:  
plot(time,
cumsum(dead))

Hi David,

Thanks for responding, and plain text ...(didn't realized I was in rich text).

The endpoint is disease recurrence, I was producing a regular KM plot of
recurrence-free probability. Then someone recommend using cumulative incidence
is preferred because death was censored in the dataset. I did a little 
googling,
I found CI was used often in the context of competing risk. I am totally new 

competing risk and trying to understand what competing risk means and why CI 

preferred than KM survival in this context. If you could share your thoughts
helping me to understand, greatly appreciated.

Searched archive, found people talking about cmprsk package for estimating and
plotting CI. would that be the same as the code you suggested: plot(time,
cumsum(dead))

Thanks very much!

John

just "1 minus kaplan-Meier survival"?

First tell us what you think CI is defined as. I suspect it is not the same. 
The

KM estimator is cumulative product of (alive-n(dead))/alive so is the product 
of

interval survival probabilities. I doubt that your definition of CI has a
similar denominator.

Under what circumstance, you should use
cumulative incidence vs KM survival? If the relationship is just CI =
1-survival, then what difference it makes to use one vs. the other?

And in R how I can draw a cumulative incidence plot.

plot(time, cumsum(dead)) ...?

I know I can make a
Kaplan-Meier survival plot using plot(survfit()), for example:

fit<-survfit(Surv(time,status)~group,data=data)
plot(fit, col=1:2)

How to draw CI plot then?

As above. Specify what you are seeking.

There is a well-defined relationship between S(t) and the cumulative hazard.
Maybe you should do a little study of those terms in texts regarding survival
analysis.

Thanks very much!

John
   [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Isn't it time you learned to post in plain text?

--
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT