Evidence map›Paper›PMID 32830428›Full record

ArticlePharmaceutical statistics2021

Delayed treatment effects, treatment switching and heterogeneous patient populations: How to design and analyze RCTs in oncology.

Robin Ristl, Nicolás M Ballarini, Heiko Götte, Armin Schüler, Martin Posch, Franz König

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Pharmaceutical statistics, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
15citing papers in PubMed, 2 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

15 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
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  5. Clinical Impact of NOTCH3 Variant Location After First Stroke in CADASIL.Annals of clinical and translational neurology · 2026
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Robin RistlCenter for Medical Statistics, Informatics, and Intelligent Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.ORCID 0000-0002-4163-9236
Nicolás M BallariniCenter for Medical Statistics, Informatics, and Intelligent Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.ORCID 0000-0002-3432-8931
Heiko GötteMerck Healthcare KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.ORCID 0000-0002-6305-4466
Armin SchülerMerck Healthcare KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.ORCID 0000-0003-3833-5757
Martin PoschCenter for Medical Statistics, Informatics, and Intelligent Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.ORCID 0000-0001-8499-8573
Franz KönigCenter for Medical Statistics, Informatics, and Intelligent Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.ORCID 0000-0002-6893-3304

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

In the analysis of survival times, the logrank test and the Cox model have been established as key tools, which do not require specific distributional assumptions. Under the assumption of proportional hazards, they are efficient and their results can be interpreted unambiguously. However, delayed treatment effects, disease progression, treatment switchers or the presence of subgroups with differential treatment effects may challenge the assumption of proportional hazards. In practice, weighted logrank tests emphasizing either early, intermediate or late event times via an appropriate weighting function may be used to accommodate for an expected pattern of non-proportionality. We model these sources of non-proportional hazards via a mixture of survival functions with piecewise constant hazard. The model is then applied to study the power of unweighted and weighted log-rank tests, as well as maximum tests allowing different time dependent weights. Simulation results suggest a robust performance of maximum tests across different scenarios, with little loss in power compared to the most powerful among the considered weighting schemes and huge power gain compared to unfavorable weights. The actual sources of non-proportional hazards are not obvious from resulting populationwise survival functions, highlighting the importance of detailed simulations in the planning phase of a trial when assuming non-proportional hazards.We provide the required tools in a software package, allowing to model data generating processes under complex non-proportional hazard scenarios, to simulate data from these models and to perform the weighted logrank tests.

Indexed as

Time-to-TreatmentTreatment SwitchingComputer SimulationHumansProportional Hazards ModelsResearch DesignSurvival Analysis

Identifiers

PMID32830428
PMCPMC7818232

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

None linked

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.