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Dear Stat-L List:

  I need some help getting started in doing a proportional hazards
type analysis on some censored survival data, using SAS.  Warning:
I know very little about survival analysis!

The Problem:
I have data on about 200 children who have had head trauma and are
therefor at risk of suffering a seizure.  I have several independent
variables that are thought to influence their risk of having a seizure,
for example, age (continuous), results of the cat scan of their head
(categorical), and the initial Glasgow coma scale (an integer from 3 to 15),
etc.  For each child I know whether or not a seizure was observed and,
if one was observed, approximately how long after the head trauma (within one
hour, one to 12 hours, within 12 hours to 3 days, etc).  If no seizure
was observed, I know how long the child was observed, after which we have
no idea what happened.

The Questions:

1.  Is the proportional hazards model reasonable?  If not, what should
    I use?

2.  How does one get SAS to do this type of survival analysis?  Please give
    me explicit code as I have lots of computer experience but only a little
    SAS experience.

Thanks for helping a beginner!

Roger J. Lewis
Department of Emergency Medicine
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center