To estimate the relationship between progression free survival time. Such censoring creates important complexities that will be discussed in the section censoring. Censoring times are independent of event times exampp,le. Observations on the relationship between progressionfree survival and overall survival. Intervalcensoring is a survival analysis problem in general. Right censoring will occur, for example, for those subjects whose birth date is known but who are still alive when they are lost to followup or when the study ends. The north american brain tumor consortium nabtc uses 6month progressionfree survival 6mopfs as the efficacy end point of therapy trials for adult patients with recurrent highgrade gliomas.
After reading this article you will be better able to interpret. Pfs as an outcome is of interest to a variety of disciplines, most especially, for purposes of this project, to oncologists, pharmacologists, trialists, social scientists, and other scientists with interest in designing or interpreting clinical. Many clinical trials are designed based on a timetoevent endpoint. Publications home of jama and the specialty journals of. Jun 10, 2009 several challenging and often controversial issues arise in oncology trials with the use of the end point progression free survival pfs, defined to be the time to detection of progressive disease or death. The use of survival analysis techniques among highly censored data sets. What software you might use would be offtopic here. In oncology, pfs usually refers to situations in which a tumor is present, as demonstrated by laboratory testing, radiologic testing, or clinically. Kaplanmeier method in spss statistics laerd statistics. With survival the whole idea of censoring is to use the incomplete observations and not create bias that could occur if you threw out the incomplete observation. Progressionfree survival pfs is commonly used as a primary endpoint in. Overall survival and progression free survival are commonly used, especially in phase 2 and 3 clinical trials.
Influence of handling censored data on estimating progression. Censoring occurs in timetoevent data the time from a defined origin until the event of interest, when the event has not been observed i. Given the vast number of cancer trials using progression free survival as the primary endpoint, the challenges in interpreting findings based on composite endpoints and the seemingly selfevident shortcomings of using the documented time of progression rather than the actual progression time, it. Although in its simplest form, pfs is the time from randomization to a predefined endpoint, there are many factors that can influence the exact moment of when disease. The inverse probability of censoring weighting technique ipcw was designed to recreate an unbiased scenario where nobody switched to other treatment, and allows us to assess the real clinical benefit of the experimental arm. Progressionfree survival pfs time from observation start date to the date of first documented disease progression or death, whichever occurs first time to progression ttp time from observation start date to the date of first documented disease progression. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the nih. Progressionfree survival pfs is increasingly used as an important and even a. Progressionfree survival as an endpoint in clinical. Publications home of jama and the specialty journals of the. Citeseerx sample size calculation and timeline estimate.
This event usually is a clinical outcome such as death, disappearance of a tumor, etc. Practically while assessing the progressionfree survival. Progressionfree survival pfs denotes the chances of staying free of disease progression for a group of individuals suffering from a cancer after a particular treatment. Finally, the software tools for volumetric analysis have typically not been. Censored patients are considered no more or less likely to undergo the event of interest than those who remain in the analysis. Progression free survival, or pfs, is defined as the time from randomisation or 1st drug administration for nonrandomised trials to the date of first radiological confirmed progression e.
In clinical trials the investigator is often interested in the time until participants in a study present a specific event or endpoint. Lately there is a growing interest in progression free survival pfs in studies of diseases that are slow growing and dif. A stepbystep guide using sas and r software audrey emmanuelle dugue1, marina pulido2, sylvie chabaud3, lisa belin4, and jocelyn gal5 abstract we describe how to estimate progressionfree survival while dealing with intervalcensored data in the setting of clinical trials in oncology. European statistical meeting on survival analysis and its. Progression free survival, or pfs, is defined as the time from. Kaplanmeier survival analysis medcalc statistical software. Survival analysis is a branch of statistics for analyzing the expected duration of time until one or more events happen, such as death in biological organisms and failure in mechanical systems. Analyzing intervalcensored survivaltime data in stata.
Different definitions of progressionfree survival pfs. Missing data and censoring in the analysis of progression free survival in oncology. Pdf how to deal with intervalcensored data practically while. Progressionfree survival pfs is frequently used as the primary endpoint in. Overall survival measures the time to death from any cause while progression free survival measures the time to progression of the disease or death from any cause. How to deal with intervalcensored data practically while. Progressionfree survival pfs is frequently used as the primary endpoint in phase ii and iii studies for latestage diseases in oncology. I have seen some studies censor at death and others include death along with recurrences as events. Sample size calculation and timeline estimate for progressionfree survival chungkuei chang, ph. The use of progressionfree survival as the efficacy. In our last blog we discussed handling missing data in clinical trials, and mentioned a kind of missing data known as censoring. The objective of the present study is to evaluate progression free survival pfs and overall survival os of cabozantinib compared to everolimus, nivolumab, axitinib, sorafenib, and best supportive care bsc in arcc patients who progressed after previous vegfr tyrosinekinase inhibitor tki treatment. Progressionfree survival pfs is the length of time during and after the treatment of a disease, such as cancer, that a patient lives with the disease but it does not get worse.
The purpose of this research project was to look at the various survival analysis techniques and determine if there was either a way of fixing these methods or a better method to use in the case of data sets with a large percentage of censored. How to deal with intervalcensored data practically while assessing the progressionfree survival. Sample size calculation and timeline estimate for progression free survival chungkuei chang, ph. Essence of survival analysis neurooncology practice. Progression free survival pfs is the length of time during and after the treatment of a disease, such as cancer, that a patient lives with the disease but it does not get worse. A clear limitation of progressionfree survival is that it ignores the timetodeath after. Informative censoring a neglected cause of bias in. In this commentary, we explore the central assumption of censoring. I with progressionfree survival time to rst of disease progression or death this assumption is not likely to be met. Informative censoring occurs when progressionfree survival is the primary end point of a randomized clinical trial and unequal patient dropout is observed between treatment arms owing to poorer. Statistical issues related to progressionfree survival and overall survival.
Kaplanmeier survival curve in excel read description for fix to correct plot. The commonly used terms such as overall survival, progression free survival, censor, and hazard ratio are not. Data from four trials conducted by the japan clinical oncology group were examined. To assess the progressionfree survival pfs associated with. Progression free survival pfs is increasingly used as an important and even a primary endpoint in randomized cancer clinical trials in the evaluation of patients with solid tumors for both practical and clinical considerations. Pfs is the duration from enrollment to disease progression or death, whichever occurs first. Use software r to do survival analysis and simulation. Analyzing intervalcensored survivaltime data in stata xiao yang seniorstatistician andsoftwaredeveloper. What is the conventional definition of recurrencefree survival. Differences in overall vs progressionfree survival.
Progression free survival pfs is a common endpoint in cancer clinical trials. Cabozantinib versus everolimus, nivolumab, axitinib. A new scheme to estimate median progressionfree survival. Unfortunately, major software for sample size calculation e.
Citeseerx document details isaac councill, lee giles, pradeep teregowda. Different definitions of progressionfree survival pfs and eventfree survival efs may result in perceived but not real differences in longterm outcome when comparing trials in chronic myeloid leukemia cml. Adjusting overall survival for treatment switch claire watkins bbsefspi european scientific meeting application of methods for health technology assessment 23rd june 2015 recommendations of a crossinstitutional statistical working group disclosure statement. A lot of functions and data sets for survival analysis is in the package survival, so we need to load it rst. If for some reason you do not have the package survival, you need to install it rst. When evaluating interventions in oncology patients, a frequently used outcome measure is progression free survival pfs, defined to be the time to the detection of progressive disease or to the patients death. Progressionfree survival may be used in a clinical study or trial to help find out how well a new treatment works. We describe how to estimate progressionfree survival while dealing with intervalcensored data in the setting of clinical trials in oncology. Several challenging and often controversial issues arise in use of this end point. In this study, we investigated whether progression status at 6 months predicts survival from that time, implying the potential for prolonged survival. Any other event be it patient withdrawal from the study, lost to followup for any other reason or death is a censored event because at that time the defined event had not occurred and there is no way for it to either occur or for the investigator to ever find out if it occurred. The role of censoring on progression free survival.
This study was undertaken to assess the impact of data errors and data handling on the statistical estimation of pfs. Inverse probability of censoring weighting for selective. Progressionfree survival pfs is defined as the time from random assignment in a clinical trial to disease progression or death from any cause. The actual occurrence of disease progression cannot be observed until. The sample size for pfs without adjusting for intervalcensoring or taking into account the.
My interpretation of disease free survival is that the only event is diagnose of return of the disease. Role of sensitivity analyses in assessing progressionfree survival in latestage oncology trials. Intervalcensored event time data arise in many area of studies. Sample size calculation and timeline estimate for progression. Progression free survival pfs is defined as the time from random assignment in a clinical trial to disease progression or death from any cause. Interval censoring results from periodic monitoring of the progression status.
Progression free survival pfs is increasingly used as an important and even a primary endpoint in randomized cancer clinical trials in the evaluation of patients with solid tumors, because of both practical and clinical considerations. Sample size survival analysis sample size calculators. Issues in using progressionfree survival when evaluating. This topic is called reliability theory or reliability analysis in engineering, duration analysis or duration modelling in economics, and event history analysis in sociology. An extension of generalized pairwise comparisons for. Claire watkins is an employee of astrazeneca uk ltd. I with progression free survival time to rst of disease progression or death this assumption is not likely to be met.
If only the lower limit l for the true event time t is known such that t l, this is called right censoring. To estimate the relationship between progression free survival time and covariates, it is common to employ the proportional hazards model, using a partial likelihood. Proportional hazards regression with interval censored data using an inverse probability weight. Deaths will change assessment schedule, because assess death in nearcontinuous time not at next scheduled appointment more on that later. Performs survival analysis and generates a kaplanmeier survival plot. Proc lifetest basic sample code using statistical analysis software sas. Meaning progressionfree survival cannot adequately capture the benefit of pd1 inhibitors. Timeline diagrams for progression t 1, death t 2, assessments a 1 and a 2 and censoring c. The influence of handling censored data on estimating. Progression free survival pfs is frequently used as the primary endpoint in phase ii and iii studies for latestage diseases in oncology. Jul 24, 2016 this video demonstrates how to perform a kaplanmeier procedure survival analysis in spss.
This project was supported by the national center for advancing translational sciences, national institutes of health, through ucsfctsi grant number ul1 tr000004. If death is traditionally included as an event, what is the rationale for. Subgroup analyses of progression free survival demonstrated no statistically significant interaction of treatment by subgroup efigure 1 in supplement 3. The kaplanmeier method is so widely used and so well known, that in research papers survival curves are more often than not called kaplanmeier curves. While overall survival os has traditionally been the standard evaluation for a new treatment in oncology since it is easily obtained and unambiguous, the endpoint of progression free survival pfs is appealing due to the shortened observation time required to determine treatment efficacy, smaller sample size requirements and no confounding due to subsequent treatments. How to deal with death in diseasefree survival analysis. Pfs appears as a relevant alternative although it does not represent a direct clinical benefit such as overall survival. The length of time during and after treatment in which a patient is living with a disease that does not get worse. Software for survival regression with interval censoring and frailty. This talk will use published results from trials in lung cancer to support the following assertions. Proportional hazards regression with interval censored data.
Progressionfree survival pfs is a common endpoint in cancer clinical trials. Traditionally research in event history analysis has focused on situations where the interest is in a single event for each subject under study. The objective of the present study is to evaluate progressionfree survival pfs and overall survival os of cabozantinib compared to everolimus, nivolumab, axitinib, sorafenib, and best supportive care bsc in arcc patients who progressed after previous vegfr tyrosinekinase inhibitor tki treatment. A new scheme to estimate median progression free survival time in oncology clinical trials. I we will often assume independent censoring to start.
In this blog we focus on techniques for dealing with this, known as survival analysis. The patient who died of primary cancer without the date of progression was censored for pfs. For clinical trials in oncology area, various terms related to the study endpoints are confusing to nonstatisticians. Not only is the package itself rich in features, but the object created by the surv function, which contains failure time and censoring information, is the basic survival analysis data structure in r. Proportional hazards regression with interval censored. Statistical issues related to progressionfree survival. A new scheme to estimate median progressionfree survival time in oncology clinical trials. Given the vast number of cancer trials using progressionfree survival as the primary endpoint, the challenges in interpreting findings based on composite endpoints and the seemingly selfevident shortcomings of using the documented time of progression rather than the actual. This video demonstrates how to perform a kaplanmeier procedure survival analysis in spss. This article focuses on latestage trials that use progressionfree survival or time to progression as their primary end point, because sensitivity analyses are particularly important in these cases for which the end point is potentially. Terry therneau, the package author, began working on. Issues in using progressionfree survival when evaluating oncology products. The kaplanmeier estimates the probability of an event occurring at specified points in time and can compare survival distributions. Similarly, diseasefree survival is when patients have had.
An introduction to survival analysis for clinical trials. Role of sensitivity analyses in assessing progressionfree. Subgroup analyses of progressionfree survival demonstrated no statistically significant interaction of treatment by subgroup efigure 1 in supplement 3. The protective effects of treatment were greater for overall survival than for progressionfree survival. While overall survival os has traditionally been the standard evaluation for a new treatment in oncology since it is easily obtained and unambiguous, the endpoint of progressionfree survival pfs is appealing due to the shortened observation time required to determine treatment efficacy, smaller sample size requirements and no confounding due to subsequent treatments. Three procedures with sas and r statistical software are described.
I have looked up and down for a standard definition of recurrence free survival, and the issue im having is determining if the standard includes death as an event or not. The survival package is the cornerstone of the entire r survival analysis edifice. It is the percentage of individuals in the group whose disease is likely to remain stable and not show signs of progression after a specified duration of time. This is a package in the recommended list, if you downloaded the binary when installing r, most likely it is included with the base package.
The current study was conducted to investigate the dependence between progression. When interest lies in evaluating treatment effects on the basis of progression. In comparing treatments i find in agreement with peters remarks i have seen it done and have done myself analyses of time to recurrence. We describe how to estimate progressionfree survival while dealing with. In the latter case, composite endpoints are often defined to capture all relevant events in a single variable. Appropriate statistical methods are available to handle.
Progressionfree survival pfs is a common endpoint in. This is a technical topic about how real survival curves are calculated using a procedure called the kaplanmeier method. Kaplanmeier procedure survival analysis in spss youtube. The commonly used terms such as overall survival, progression free survival, censor, and hazard ratio are not straightforward to nonstatisticians. Censoring is increasingly appreciated as a potential bias affecting estimates of progression free survival pfs in randomised trials.
A clear limitation of progression free survival is that it ignores the timetodeath after. Software for survival regression with interval censoring. In oncology, progressionfree survival pfs is often used as the primary endpoint in clinical trials 1 since the response rate has been strongly criticized to evaluate targeted therapies. The kaplanmeier estimates the probability of an event occurring at specified points in time and can.
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