On Comparing Survival Curves with Right-Censored Data According to the Events Occur at the Beginning, in the Middle and at the End of Study Period

Authors

  • Pinar Gunel Karadeniz Department of Biostatistics Gaziantep, SANKO University, Faculty of Medicine, 27090, Turkey
  • Ilker Ercan Department of Biostatistics Gorukle Campus Bursa, Uludag University, Faculty of Medicine, Turkey

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6000/1929-6029.2018.07.04.2

Keywords:

Survival analysis, survival curves, comparison of survival curves, right censored observations.

Abstract

In clinical practice the event of interest does not always occur equally across the study time period. Depending on the disease being investigated, the event that is of interest can occur intensively in different periods of the follow-up time. In such cases, choosing the correct survival comparison test has importance. This study aims to examine and discuss the results of survival comparison tests under some certain circumstances. A simulation study was conducted. We discussed the result of different tests such as Logrank, Gehan-Wilcoxon, Tarone-Ware, Peto-Peto, Modified Peto-Peto tests and tests belonging to Fleming-Harrington test family with (p, q) values; (1, 0), (0.5, 0.5), (1, 1), (0, 1) ve (0.5, 2) by means of Type I error rate that obtained from simulation study, when the event of interest occurred intensively at the beginning of the study, in the middle of the study and at the end of the study time period. As a result of simulation study, Type I error rate of tests is generally lower or higher than the nominal value. In the light of the results, it is proposed to re-examine the tests for cases where events are observed intensively at the beginning, middle and late periods, to carry out new simulation studies and to develop new tests if necessary.

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Published

2018-10-25

How to Cite

Karadeniz, P. G., & Ercan, I. (2018). On Comparing Survival Curves with Right-Censored Data According to the Events Occur at the Beginning, in the Middle and at the End of Study Period . International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research, 7(4), 117–128. https://doi.org/10.6000/1929-6029.2018.07.04.2

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General Articles