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- Title
Group sequential tests for long-term survival comparisons.
- Authors
Logan, Brent; Mo, Shuyuan
- Abstract
Sometimes in clinical trials, the hazard rates are anticipated to be nonproportional, resulting in potentially crossing survival curves. In these cases, researchers are usually interested in which treatment has better long-term survival. The log-rank test and the weighted log-rank test may not be appropriate or efficient to use here, because they are sensitive to differences in survival at any time and don't just focus on long-term outcomes. Also in a prospective clinical trial, patients are entered sequentially over calendar time, so that group sequential designs may be considered for ethical, administrative and economic concerns. Here we develop group sequential methods for testing the null hypothesis that the survival curves are identical after a prespecified time point. Several classes of tests are considered, including an integrated difference in survival probabilities after this time point, and linear or quadratic combinations of two component test statistics (pointwise comparisons of survival at the time point and comparisons of hazard rates after the time point). We examine the type I errors, stopping probabilities, and powers of these tests through simulation studies under the null and different alternatives, and we apply them to a real bone marrow transplant clinical trial.
- Subjects
GROUP sequential design; CLINICAL trials; HEALTH outcome assessment; NULL hypothesis; SURVIVAL analysis (Biometry); BONE marrow transplantation
- Publication
Lifetime Data Analysis, 2015, Vol 21, Issue 2, p218
- ISSN
1380-7870
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10985-014-9298-4