It is frequently of interest in time-to-event analysis to compare multiple survival functions nonparametrically. However, when the hazard functions cross, tests in existing R packages do not perform well. To address the issue, we introduce the package survELtest, which provides tests for comparing multiple survival functions with possibly crossing hazards. Due to its powerful likelihood ratio formulation, this is the only R package to date that works when the hazard functions cross. We illustrate the use of the procedures in survELtest by applying them to data from randomized clinical trials and simulated datasets. We show that these methods lead to more significant results than those obtained by existing R packages.
Supplementary materials are available in addition to this article. It can be downloaded at RJ-2021-002.zip
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For attribution, please cite this work as
Chang, et al., "Comparing Multiple Survival Functions with Crossing Hazards in R", The R Journal, 2021
BibTeX citation
@article{RJ-2021-002,
author = {Chang, Hsin-wen and Tsai, Pei-Yuan and Kao, Jen-Tse and Lan, Guo-You},
title = {Comparing Multiple Survival Functions with Crossing Hazards in R},
journal = {The R Journal},
year = {2021},
note = {https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2021-002},
doi = {10.32614/RJ-2021-002},
volume = {12},
issue = {2},
issn = {2073-4859},
pages = {107-119}
}