Work

Sensitivity analysis for unmeasured confounding in estimating the difference in restricted mean survival time

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: The difference in restricted mean survival time has been increasingly used as an alternative measure to the hazard ratio in survival analysis. Although some statistical methods have been developed for estimating the difference in restricted mean survival time adjusted for measured confounders in observational studies, the impact of unmeasured confounding on the estimate has rarely been assessed. We develop a novel sensitivity analysis for the estimate of the difference in restricted mean survival time with respect to unmeasured confounding. After formulating the sensitivity analysis problem as an optimization problem, we explain how to obtain the sensitivity range of the difference in restricted mean survival time efficiently and assess its uncertainty using the percentile bootstrap confidence interval. Analytic results are provided for some important survival settings. Simulation studies show that the proposed methods perform well in various settings. We illustrate the proposed sensitivity analysis method by analyzing data from the German Breast Cancer Study Group study.

Source: Statistical Methods in Medical Research

DOI: 10.1177/09622802241280782

Authors: Seungjae Lee, Ji Hoon Park, Woojoo Lee

Institutions: Seoul National University, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital

Language: English

Topic: Advanced Causal Inference Techniques

Subfield: Statistics and Probability

Field: Mathematics

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: National Research Foundation, National Research Foundation of Korea, Ministry of Science and ICT, South Korea