ArticleJournal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology2013
Challenges of guarantee-time bias.
Article in Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 206 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
206 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Safety of pregnancy after breast cancer in young women with hormone receptor-positive disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis.ESMO open · 2023Pooled it
- Prognostic and Predictive Factors in Patients with Advanced HCC and Elevated Alpha-Fetoprotein Treated with Ramucirumab in Two Randomized Phase III Trials.Clinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research · 2022Pooled it
- Neoadjuvant Treatment in Patients With Resectable and Borderline Resectable Pancreatic Cancer.Frontiers in oncology · 2020Pooled it
- Androgen deprivation alone versus combined with pelvic radiation for adverse events and quality of life in clinically node-positive prostate cancer.Scientific reports · 2024Trial
- Long-Term Outcomes With Nivolumab Plus Ipilimumab or Nivolumab Alone Versus Ipilimumab in Patients With Advanced Melanoma.Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology · 2022Trial
- Molecular correlates of response to eribulin and pembrolizumab in hormone receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer.Nature communications · 2021Trial
- Blood-derived dendritic cell vaccinations induce immune responses that correlate with clinical outcome in patients with chemo-naive castration-resistant prostate cancer.Journal for immunotherapy of cancer · 2019Trial
- Adjuvant Anti-HER2 Therapy, Treatment-Related Amenorrhea, and Survival in Premenopausal HER2-Positive Early Breast Cancer Patients.Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2019Trial
- Low-Dose Oral Cyclophosphamide and Methotrexate Maintenance for Hormone Receptor-Negative Early Breast Cancer: International Breast Cancer Study Group Trial 22-00.Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology · 2016Trial
- Lapatinib-Related Rash and Breast Cancer Outcome in the ALTTO Phase III Randomized Trial.Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2016Trial
- Trial
- The Prognostic Significance of Metabolic Response Heterogeneity in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer.PloS one · 2015Trial
- Metabolic response by FDG-PET to imatinib correlates with exon 11 KIT mutation and predicts outcome in patients with mucosal melanoma.Cancer imaging : the official publication of the International Cancer Imaging Society · 2014Trial
- Association Between Regular Dental Scaling and Risk of Dementia in Patients With Moderate to Severe Periodontitis Longitudinal Study Using Korean National Health Insurance Service-National Health Screening Cohort Data Base.International journal of dental hygiene · 2026Article
- Interpreting the 39% clinical complete response rate in SURE-02: why the assessment pathway matters.Gland surgery · 2026Article
- Real-World Outcomes of Second-Line Chemotherapy in Metastatic Urothelial Carcinoma.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2026Observational
- Oral glucocorticoid treatment for checkpoint inhibitor-associated inflammatory arthritis does not affect cancer progression-free survival: a RADIOS Registry study.Annals of the rheumatic diseases · 2026Observational
- Interpreting survival differences in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma of unknown primary: time-dependent treatment and biological selection.European archives of oto-rhino-laryngology : official journal of the European Federation of Oto-Rhino-Laryngological Societies (EUFOS) : affiliated with the German Society for Oto-Rhino-Laryngology - Head and Neck Surgery · 2026Article
- Modality-specific survival outcomes of biomarker-matched therapy in unresected non-small cell lung cancer: a clinicogenomic cohort study.Translational lung cancer research · 2026Article
- Third-Line Treatment Timing After Second-Line Discontinuation in Advanced Pancreatic Cancer: A 30-Day Landmark Analysis.Journal of gastrointestinal cancer · 2026Article
146 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The potential for guarantee-time bias (GTB), also known as immortal time bias, exists whenever an analysis that is timed from enrollment or random assignment, such as disease-free or overall survival, is compared across groups defined by a classifying event occurring sometime during follow-up. The types of events associated with GTB are varied and may include the occurrence of objective disease response, onset of toxicity, or seroconversion. However, comparative analyses using these types of events as predictors are different from analyses using baseline characteristics that are specified completely before the occurrence of any outcome event. Recognizing the potential for GTB is not always straightforward, and it can be challenging to know when GTB is influencing the results of an analysis. This article defines GTB, provides examples of GTB from several published articles, and discusses three analytic techniques that can be used to remove the bias: conditional landmark analysis, extended Cox model, and inverse probability weighting. The strengths and limitations of each technique are presented. As an example, we explore the effect of bisphosphonate use on disease-free survival (DFS) using data from the BIG (Breast International Group) 1-98 randomized clinical trial. An analysis using a naive approach showed substantial benefit for patients who received bisphosphonate therapy. In contrast, analyses using the three methods known to remove GTB showed no statistical evidence of a reduction in risk of a DFS event with bisphosphonate therapy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.