Online Program

Return to main conference page
Saturday, February 22
Sat, Feb 22, 8:00 AM - 9:15 AM
Regency EF
Poster Session 3 and Continental Breakfast

Alternative to Hazard Ratio in Measuring the Between-Group Variation for Patients Undergoing Surgery (304092)

Madison Hyer, The Ohio State University James Cancer Center 
*Rittal Mehta, The Ohio State University James Cancer Center 
Timothy Pawlik, The Ohio State University James Cancer Center 
Kota Sahara, The Ohio State University 
Diamantis Tsilimigras, The Ohio State University James Cancer Center 

Keywords: RMST; novel techniques; colloboration; communication

Time to event analyses are widely used in clinical research. Use of the Kaplan Meier survival curve and cox regression is a common tool to evaluate time-to-event data. However, scenarios in which basic assumptions of cox analyses are violated, a non-parametric approach named restricted mean survival analyses (RMST) would be desirable. RMST is defined as a population average of event-free survival time subject to a specific time horizon. The poster highlights the challenges to communicate newer approaches such as RMST to clients from non-statistical background and making them understand what questions can be answered with these novel techniques. RMST is a robust approach that provides meaningful, detailed and easy to interpret information on mean survival time at different time points for surgeons and patients. The poster uses examples of RMST and sheds light on challenges faced by statisticians to effectively communicate right analyses and techniques as well as the importance of being updated with newer techniques to solve real world problems appropriately.