Restricted Mean Survival Time (RMST) for Handling the Non-Proportional Hazards Time to Event Data

Time to event analysis (or traditionally survival analysis) is one of the most common analyses in clinical trials. In general, the time to event analysis relies on the assumption of the proportional hazards. However, quietly frequently, we may find that the proportional hazards assumption is violated, especially in many immuno-oncology trials. When the proportional hazards assumption is violated, alternative approaches may be needed to analyze the data to achieve statistical power. As discussed in the previous post "Non-proportional Hazards: how to analyze the time-to-event data?", one of the alternative approaches is the restricted mean survival time (RMST) method. 

RMST is one of the Kaplan-Meier-based methods and is essentially calculating and comparing AUCs under Kaplan-Meier Curves for different treatment groups or different comparative groups. It has been said that RMST analysis has the following advantages:

• Model-free, robust, and easily interpretable treatment effect information
• Produces radically powerful patterns of difference as has been observed in some recent Oncology clinical trials
• Accepted approach by regulatory agencies and industry leaders

RMST has been mentioned in the latest FDA guidance for Industry (2020): Acute Myeloid Leukemia: Developing Drugs and Biological Products for Treatment as an alternative approach to analyzing the data when the non-proportionality hazards occur (e.g., plateauing effect). 

"Plateauing Effect

Trials designed to cure AML often result in survival contours characterized by an initial drop followed by a plateauing effect after some time point post randomization. This is an example of nonproportional hazards. While the log-rank test is somewhat robust to nonproportionality, it generally results in loss of power. Furthermore, nonproportionality can cause difficulty in describing the treatment effect. FDA is open to discussion about analyses based on other approaches, such as weighted Cox regression or other weighted methods, or summarizing the treatment effect using restricted mean survival time (RMST) or landmark survival analysis. Plans that use these alternative approaches should include:

• justification for what constitutes clinically meaningful difference,
• justification of design parameters, such as sample size and follow-up duration, based on this endpoint, and
• justification for the value of the threshold that will be used to calculate the RMST.

RMST analysis has also been used as a primary analysis approach or for sensitivity analysis in FDA reviews: 

In NDA of Baloxavir marboxil in treatment of acute, uncomplicated influenza, both applicants and the FDA reviewer analyzed the data using RMST. It stated:

Restricted mean survival time (RMST) up to Day 10 was estimated for each treatment group along with the difference between RMST in the two treatment groups. RMST is a measurement of the average survival from time 0 to a specified time point (e.g., 10 days) which is equivalent to the area under the Kaplan-Meier curve from the beginning of the study through that time point.

At an FDA CDRH Medical Devices Advisory Committee Circulatory System Panel meeting in 2019, the independent statistical consultant addressed the analysis issue when the proportional hazards assumption is violated:

The proposal they made was the restricted mean survival time. The restricted mean survival time is area under curve. Please note the word restricted. Mean survival time is over a period of time, according to the rules that have been laid out, so that you're not looking, like with proportional hazards, over all the follow-up that could have possibly happened or in binary where you're only looking at the patients that survive. The restricted mean would say we're going to look between, let's say, 0 and 5 years because we have sufficient information to make that kind of assessment.

The paper showed that the restricted mean has just as much power as proportional hazards when the assumptions are there for proportional hazards, and then has more power when the assumptions are violated.

There's also some advantages in terms for clinicians, in terms of explaining this to the patient. It's hard to talk about hazards or number needed to treat. But if you could say to a patient over a 60-month period the average survival time is 55 months with Device A versus 52 months with Device B, now they can look at what their life is going to look like in the next 60 months and make a decision.

Unfortunately, it was not me who noticed this. This was actually from a presentation by FDA. Several very smart statisticians had talked about the restricted mean and have made recommendations on using it for both proportional violations and for its interpretation.

In FDA Briefing Document for Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee Meeting (December 17, 2019) to review Olaparib for the maintenance treatment of adult patients with deleterious or suspected deleterious germline BRCA mutated (gBRCAm) metastatic adenocarcinoma of the pancreas

FDA performed a test to evaluate whether the proportional hazard assumption was met. This test failed to detect evidence of non-proportionality; however, such a test may lack power to detect non-proportionality due to the small sample size. The Kaplan-Meier curves of PFS appear to show some degree of nonproportionality. The curves did not show separation until approximately 4 months, after approximately 53% of patients either had events or were censored. FDA performed additional sensitivity analyses by applying the restricted mean survival time (RMST) method using different truncation points (15 months and 18 months). The truncated time was selected (15 or 18 months) such that approximately 8-12% patients remained at risk. Based on the truncation times, the estimated RMST difference in PFS between arms ranged from 2.6 months (95% CI: 0.9, 4.3) to 3.1 months (95% CI: 1.0, 5.2). The range of the RMST differences again demonstrated great variation in the difference in PFS and the lower ends did not suggest that there was a clinically meaningful difference.

Thanks to the software, RMST analyses can be easily implemented in SAS or R. In the latest version (version 15.1 or above) of SAS/Stat, RMST is included in SAS Proc LIFETEST with RMST option and Proc RMSTREG. See a nice paper by 

With R, the package for RMST analysis is survRM2 that is developed by Hajime Uno from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

For RMST analysis, it is important to select the cut-off value (tau) for the truncated time. The different selection of taus will give different results. The selection of tau can sometimes be arbitrary. In an FDA briefing document above, the FDA statistician chose the truncated time such that approximately 8-12% of patients remained at risk.

There are different ways to calculate the RMST:

• Non-parametric method
• Regression Analysis Method
• Pseudo-value Regression Method
• IPCW Regression - Inverse Probability of Censoring Weighting (IPCW) regression
• Conditional restricted mean survival time (CRMST)

According to the paper by Guo and Liang (2019) "Analyzing Restricted Mean Survival Time Using SAS/STAT®", non-parametric analysis can be implemented using Proc Lifetest; regression analysis, pseudo-value regression, and IPCW regression can be implemented using SAS Proc RMSTREG. 

FDA statisticians also proposed an approach 'conditional restricted mean survival time' or CRMST. This approach was described in the paper by Qiu et al (2019) "Estimation on conditional restricted mean survival time with counting process" and also in a presentation by Lawrence and Qiu (2020) Novel Survival Analysis When Hazards Are Nonproportional and/or There Are Multiple Types of Events. CRMST can allow the AUC under K-M curves to be calculated from an interval time (not necessarily to be started from the 0 time). They claim CRMST is better for event-driven studies where the time to the first event is the interest. They concluded the following: 

CRMST possesses all the desirable statistical properties of RMST. In particular, it does not rely on proportional hazard assumption. In addition, CRMST measures an average event-free time in the time range at issue and has straightforward interpretation. In case that two survival curves cross, CRMST can be estimated separately before and after crossing and the CRMST differences can be used to assess benefit versus harm.

Further Reading:

• Royston & Parmar (2013) Restricted mean survival time: an alternative to the hazard ratio for the design and analysis of randomized trials with a time-to-event outcome
• Huang & Kuan (2017) Comparison of the restricted mean survival time with the hazard ratio in superiority trials with a time-to-event end point
• McCaw, Yin, and Wei (2019) Using the Restricted Mean Survival Time Difference as an Alternative to the Hazard Ratio for Analyzing Clinical Cardiovascular Studies
• Rivano et al (2020) Restricted mean survival time as outcome measure in advanced urothelial bladder cancer: analysis of 4 clinical studies
  
• Lawrence et al (2016) Comparison of Hazard Ratio and Restricted Mean Survival Analysis for Cardiorenal Drug Trials
• Tian L, Zhao L, Wei LJ. Predicting the restricted mean event time with the subject's baseline covariates in survival analysis. Biostatistics 2014, 15, 222-233.