A weighted log-rank test for comparing two survival curves

摘要

This paper proposes a weighted log-rank test that maintains sensitivity to realistic alternatives of two survival curves, such as crossing curves, in the presence of heavy censoring. The new test incorporates a weight function that changes over the censoring level, increasing adaptivity and flexibility of the commonly used weighted log-rank tests. The new statistic is asymptotically normal under the null hypothesis that there is no difference in survival between two groups. The performances of the new test are evaluated via simulations under both proportional and non-proportional alternatives. We illustrate the new method with a real-world application.