Estimating Causal Treatment Effects Via the Propensity Score and Estimating Survival Distributions in Clinical Trials That Follow Two-Stage Randomization Designs

Estimating Causal Treatment Effects Via the Propensity Score and Estimating Survival Distributions in Clinical Trials That Follow Two-Stage Randomization Designs PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
Estimation of treatment effects with causalinterpretation from obervational data is complicated by the fact thatexposure to treatment is confounded with subject characteristics. Thepropensity score, the probability of exposure to treatment conditionalon covariates, is the basis for two competing classes of approachesfor adjusting for confounding: methods based on stratification ofobservations by quantiles of estimated propensity scores, and methods based on weighting individual observations by weights depending onestimated propensity scores. We review these approaches andinvestigate their relative performance. Some clinical trials follow a design in which patientsare randomized to a primary therapy upon entry followed by anotherrandomization to maintenance therapy contingent upon diseaseremission. Ideally, analysis would allow different treatmentpolicies, i.e. combinations of primary and maintenance therapy ifspecified up-front, to be compared. Standard practice is to conductseparate analyses for the primary and follow-up treatments, which doesnot address this issue directly. We propose consistent estimators ofthe survival distribution and mean survival time for each treatmentpolicy in such two-stage studies and derive large sampleproperties. The methods are demonstrated on a leukemia clinical trialdata set and through simulation.

Estimating Causal Treatment Effects Via the Propensity Score and Estimating Survival Distributions in Clinical Trials That Follow Two-Stage Randomization Designs

Estimating Causal Treatment Effects Via the Propensity Score and Estimating Survival Distributions in Clinical Trials That Follow Two-Stage Randomization Designs PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
Estimation of treatment effects with causalinterpretation from obervational data is complicated by the fact thatexposure to treatment is confounded with subject characteristics. Thepropensity score, the probability of exposure to treatment conditionalon covariates, is the basis for two competing classes of approachesfor adjusting for confounding: methods based on stratification ofobservations by quantiles of estimated propensity scores, and methods based on weighting individual observations by weights depending onestimated propensity scores. We review these approaches andinvestigate their relative performance. Some clinical trials follow a design in which patientsare randomized to a primary therapy upon entry followed by anotherrandomization to maintenance therapy contingent upon diseaseremission. Ideally, analysis would allow different treatmentpolicies, i.e. combinations of primary and maintenance therapy ifspecified up-front, to be compared. Standard practice is to conductseparate analyses for the primary and follow-up treatments, which doesnot address this issue directly. We propose consistent estimators ofthe survival distribution and mean survival time for each treatmentpolicy in such two-stage studies and derive large sampleproperties. The methods are demonstrated on a leukemia clinical trialdata set and through simulation.

Estimating Casual Treatment Effects Via the Propensity Score and Estimating Survival Distributions in Clinical Trials that Follow Two-stage Randomization Designs

Estimating Casual Treatment Effects Via the Propensity Score and Estimating Survival Distributions in Clinical Trials that Follow Two-stage Randomization Designs PDF Author: Jared Kenneth Lunceford
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 75

Get Book Here

Book Description


Efficient Estimation of The Survival Distribution and Related Quantities of Treatment Policies in Two-Stage Randomization Designs in Clinical Trials

Efficient Estimation of The Survival Distribution and Related Quantities of Treatment Policies in Two-Stage Randomization Designs in Clinical Trials PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
Two-stage designs are common in therapeutic clinical trials such as Cancer or AIDS treatments. In a two-stage design, patients are initially treated with one induction (primary) therapy and then depending upon their response and consent, are treated by a maintenance therapy, sometimes to intensify the effect of the first stage therapy. The goal is to compare different combinations of primary and maintenance (intensification) therapies to find the combination that is most beneficial. To achieve this goal, patients are initially randomized to one of several induction therapies and then if they are eligible for the second-stage randomization, are offered to be randomized to one of several maintenance therapies. In practice, the analysis is usually conducted in two separate stages which does not directly address the major objective of finding the best combination. Recently Lunceford et al. (2002, Biometrics, 58, 48-57) introduced ad hoc estimators for the survival distribution and mean restricted survival time under different treatment policies. These estimators are consistent but not efficient, and do not include information from auxiliary covariates. In this dissertation study we derive estimators that are easy to compute and are more efficient than previous estimators. We also show how to improve efficiency further by taking into account additional information from auxiliary variables. Large sample properties of these estimators are derived and comparisons with other estimators are made using simulation. We apply our estimators to a leukemia clinical trial data set that motivated this study.

Efficient Estimation of the Survival Distribution and Related Quantities of Treatment Policies in Two-stage Randomization Designs in Clinical Trials

Efficient Estimation of the Survival Distribution and Related Quantities of Treatment Policies in Two-stage Randomization Designs in Clinical Trials PDF Author: Abdus Shakoor Fazlul Wahed
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 92

Get Book Here

Book Description
Keywords: Missing data, Survival distributions, Semiparametric inference, Two-stage designs.

Statistical Analysis in Two Stage Randomization Designs in Clinical Trials

Statistical Analysis in Two Stage Randomization Designs in Clinical Trials PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
Two-stage randomization designs are becoming more common in many clinical trials related to diseases such as cancer and HIV, where an induction therapy is given followed by a maintenance therapy depending on patients' response and consent. The main interest is to compare combinations of induction and maintenance therapies and to find the combination leading to the longest average survival time. However, in practice, the data analysis is typically conducted separately in two stages. In this Thesis, we tackle the problem based on treatment policies. We use the concepts of counting process and risk set as described by Fleming and Harrington (1991) to find weighted estimating equations whose solution gives an estimator for the cumulative hazard function which, in turn, is used to derive an estimator for the overall survival distribution under a treatment policy with right-censored data. We call this estimator as the Weighted Risk Set Estimator (WRSE). We show that the WRSE is consistent and asymptotically normally distributed. In addition to survival distribution estimation, we also consider the hypothesis testing problem. Since the log rank test is the common method for hypothesis testing in survival analysis, we propose a test statistic using an inverse weighted version of the log rank test. We use simulation studies to demonstrate the properties of our method and use data from a clinical trial, Protocol 88923, conducted by the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) to illustrate how to implement the method.

Small Clinical Trials

Small Clinical Trials PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309171148
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Get Book Here

Book Description
Clinical trials are used to elucidate the most appropriate preventive, diagnostic, or treatment options for individuals with a given medical condition. Perhaps the most essential feature of a clinical trial is that it aims to use results based on a limited sample of research participants to see if the intervention is safe and effective or if it is comparable to a comparison treatment. Sample size is a crucial component of any clinical trial. A trial with a small number of research participants is more prone to variability and carries a considerable risk of failing to demonstrate the effectiveness of a given intervention when one really is present. This may occur in phase I (safety and pharmacologic profiles), II (pilot efficacy evaluation), and III (extensive assessment of safety and efficacy) trials. Although phase I and II studies may have smaller sample sizes, they usually have adequate statistical power, which is the committee's definition of a "large" trial. Sometimes a trial with eight participants may have adequate statistical power, statistical power being the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when the hypothesis is false. Small Clinical Trials assesses the current methodologies and the appropriate situations for the conduct of clinical trials with small sample sizes. This report assesses the published literature on various strategies such as (1) meta-analysis to combine disparate information from several studies including Bayesian techniques as in the confidence profile method and (2) other alternatives such as assessing therapeutic results in a single treated population (e.g., astronauts) by sequentially measuring whether the intervention is falling above or below a preestablished probability outcome range and meeting predesigned specifications as opposed to incremental improvement.

The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials

The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309158141
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Get Book Here

Book Description
Randomized clinical trials are the primary tool for evaluating new medical interventions. Randomization provides for a fair comparison between treatment and control groups, balancing out, on average, distributions of known and unknown factors among the participants. Unfortunately, these studies often lack a substantial percentage of data. This missing data reduces the benefit provided by the randomization and introduces potential biases in the comparison of the treatment groups. Missing data can arise for a variety of reasons, including the inability or unwillingness of participants to meet appointments for evaluation. And in some studies, some or all of data collection ceases when participants discontinue study treatment. Existing guidelines for the design and conduct of clinical trials, and the analysis of the resulting data, provide only limited advice on how to handle missing data. Thus, approaches to the analysis of data with an appreciable amount of missing values tend to be ad hoc and variable. The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials concludes that a more principled approach to design and analysis in the presence of missing data is both needed and possible. Such an approach needs to focus on two critical elements: (1) careful design and conduct to limit the amount and impact of missing data and (2) analysis that makes full use of information on all randomized participants and is based on careful attention to the assumptions about the nature of the missing data underlying estimates of treatment effects. In addition to the highest priority recommendations, the book offers more detailed recommendations on the conduct of clinical trials and techniques for analysis of trial data.

Statistical Techniques for Estimating Causal Effects in Biomedical Research

Statistical Techniques for Estimating Causal Effects in Biomedical Research PDF Author: Claudia Coscia Requena
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Causal inference methods are statistical techniques used to analyse the causal effect of a treatment/exposure on an outcome. Their use is increasing in the last decade, especially in the framework of observational studies where the no randomization of the treatment/exposure may lead to confounding bias. These methods present great advantages versus classic regression models due to their capability of reducing and controlling for confounding bias.This thesis begins with the use of known techniques applied in real clinical scenarios, second, a lack of developed statistical methods to estimate causal effects in complex epidemiological scenarios is noted. These findings support the main objective of this thesis, which is the development of causal inference methods to better understand and diagnose clinical and epidemiological outcomes. A comparison between the Propensity Score and classic regression models was made using an Intensive Care Unit database where it was shown that, in presence of confounding bias, Propensity Score performed better. Moreover, based on a systematic review and metaanalysis, causal estimates from Propensity Score and Randomized Controlled Trials were compared. It was observed that similar estimations were obtained in both approaches...

Developing a Protocol for Observational Comparative Effectiveness Research: A User's Guide

Developing a Protocol for Observational Comparative Effectiveness Research: A User's Guide PDF Author: Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (U.S.)
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 1587634236
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book Here

Book Description
This User’s Guide is a resource for investigators and stakeholders who develop and review observational comparative effectiveness research protocols. It explains how to (1) identify key considerations and best practices for research design; (2) build a protocol based on these standards and best practices; and (3) judge the adequacy and completeness of a protocol. Eleven chapters cover all aspects of research design, including: developing study objectives, defining and refining study questions, addressing the heterogeneity of treatment effect, characterizing exposure, selecting a comparator, defining and measuring outcomes, and identifying optimal data sources. Checklists of guidance and key considerations for protocols are provided at the end of each chapter. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews. More more information, please consult the Agency website: www.effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov)

Estimating Causal Treatment Effect in Randomized Clinical Trials with Noncompliance and Outcome Nonresponse

Estimating Causal Treatment Effect in Randomized Clinical Trials with Noncompliance and Outcome Nonresponse PDF Author: Leslie Taylor
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 110

Get Book Here

Book Description