Restricted mean survival time to estimate an intervention effect in a cluster randomized trial
Author(s) of the publication: Floriane Le Vilain–Abraham, Elsa Tavernier, Etienne Dantan, Solène Desmée and Agnès Caille
For time-to-event outcomes, the difference in restricted mean survival time is a measure of the intervention effect, an alternative to the hazard ratio, corresponding to the expected survival duration gain due to the intervention up to a predefined time t*. We extended two existing approaches of restricted mean survival time estimation for independent data to clustered data in the framework of cluster randomized trials: one based on the direct integration of Kaplan-Meier curves and the other based on pseudo-values regression. Then, we conducted a simulation study to assess and compare the statistical performance of the proposed methods, varying the number and size of clusters, the degree of clustering, and the magnitude of the intervention effect under proportional and non-proportional hazards assumption.
SMMR