Marginal hazards regression for retrospective studies within cohort with possibly correlated failure time data

A retrospective dental study was conducted to evaluate the degree to which pulpal involvement affects tooth survival. Due to the clustering of teeth, the survival times within each subject could be correlated and thus the conventional method for the case-control studies cannot be directly applied. In this article, we propose a marginal model approach for this type of correlated case-control within cohort data. Weighted estimating equations are proposed for the estimation of the regression parameters. Different types of weights are also considered for improving the efficiency. Asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators are investigated and their finite sample properties are assessed via simulations studies. The proposed method is applied to the aforementioned dental study.