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rpsftm: An R Package for Rank Preserving Structural Failure Time Models.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

White, Ian R 

Abstract

Treatment switching in a randomised controlled trial occurs when participants change from their randomised treatment to the other trial treatment during the study. Failure to account for treatment switching in the analysis (i.e. by performing a standard intention-to-treat analysis) can lead to biased estimates of treatment efficacy. The rank preserving structural failure time model (RPSFTM) is a method used to adjust for treatment switching in trials with survival outcomes. The RPSFTM is due to Robins and Tsiatis (1991) and has been developed by White et al. (1997, 1999). The method is randomisation based and uses only the randomised treatment group, observed event times, and treatment history in order to estimate a causal treatment effect. The treatment effect, ψ, is estimated by balancing counter-factual event times (that would be observed if no treatment were received) between treatment groups. G-estimation is used to find the value of ψ such that a test statistic Z(ψ) = 0. This is usually the test statistic used in the intention-to-treat analysis, for example, the log rank test statistic. We present an R package that implements the method of rpsftm.

Description

Keywords

1103 Clinical Sciences, Clinical, Clinical Medicine and Science, Clinical Research, Clinical Trials and Supportive Activities, Cancer

Journal Title

R J

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2073-4859
2073-4859

Volume Title

9

Publisher

The R Foundation