Chest
Volume 158, Issue 1, Supplement, July 2020, Pages S39-S48
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Supplement: An Overview of Study Design and Statistical Considerations
A Practical Overview and Reporting Strategies for Statistical Analysis of Survival Studies

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2020.03.015Get rights and content

Survival (time-to-event) analysis is commonly used in clinical research. Key features of performing a survival analysis include checking proportional hazards assumptions, reporting CIs for hazards ratios and relative risks, graphically displaying the findings, and analyzing with consideration of competing risks. This article provides a brief overview of important statistical considerations for survival analysis. Censoring schemes, different methods of survival function estimation, and ways to compare survival curves are described. We also explain competing risk and how to model survival data in the presence of it. Different kinds of bias that influence survival estimation and avenues to model the data under these circumstances are also described. Several analysis techniques are accompanied by graphical representations illustrating proper reporting strategies. We provide a list of guiding statements for researchers and reviewers.

Key Words

accelerated failure time model
censoring
competing risk
Cox proportional hazards model
hazard function
Kaplan-Meier estimate
log-rank test
survival function

Abbreviations

AFT
accelerated failure time
KM
Kaplan-Meier
PH
proportional hazards

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