title: Relative efficiency in survival analysis.
abstract: The relative efficiency of analyzing the times to death vs the proportion surviving a fixed period when comparing the survival experience of two groups is examined. The two methods are compared with respect to trial duration for either fixed patient entry or cost and with respect to cost for fixed duration. When the ratio of median survival is equal to or less than three, analyzing the times is more efficient. Analyzing the proportions is more efficient in certain circumstances when larger differences exist.
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D009026:Mortality; D013223:Statistics as Topic