title: Comparing survival curves using an easy to interpret statistic.
abstract: Here, I describe a statistic for comparing two survival curves that has a clear and obvious meaning and has a long history in biostatistics. Suppose we are comparing survival times associated with two treatments A and B. The statistic operates in such a way that if it takes on the value 0.95, then the interpretation is that a randomly chosen patient treated with A has a 95% chance of surviving longer than a randomly chosen patient treated with B. This statistic was first described in the 1950s, and was generalized in the 1960s to work with right-censored survival times. It is a useful and convenient measure for assessing differences between survival curves. Software for computing the statistic is readily available on the Internet.
authors: Department of Biostatistics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas 77230-1402, USA.
authors: Kenneth R
authors: KR
authors: Hess
mesh_terms: D056808:Biostatistics / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007770:L-Lactate Dehydrogenase / Q000378:metabolism; D012512:Sarcoma, Ewing / Q000201:enzymology / Q000401:mortality; D016019:Survival Analysis
chemical_list: D007770:L-Lactate Dehydrogenase