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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lange, Zoe Kristin, Farhadizadeh, Maryam, Dette, Holger, Binder, Nadine
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00583
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author Lange, Zoe Kristin
Farhadizadeh, Maryam
Dette, Holger
Binder, Nadine
author_facet Lange, Zoe Kristin
Farhadizadeh, Maryam
Dette, Holger
Binder, Nadine
contents Assessing whether two patient populations exhibit comparable event dynamics is essential for evaluating treatment equivalence, pooling data across cohorts, or comparing clinical pathways across hospitals or strategies. We introduce a statistical framework for formally testing the similarity of competing risks models based on transition probabilities, which represent the cumulative risk of each event over time. Our method defines a maximum-type distance between the transition probability matrices of two multistate processes and employs a novel constrained parametric bootstrap test to evaluate similarity under both administrative and random right censoring. We theoretically establish the asymptotic validity and consistency of the bootstrap test. Through extensive simulation studies, we show that our method reliably controls the type I error and achieves higher statistical power than existing intensity-based approaches. Applying the framework to routine clinical data of prostate cancer patients treated with radical prostatectomy, we identify the smallest similarity threshold at which patients with and without prior in-house fusion biopsy exhibit comparable readmission dynamics. The proposed method provides a robust and interpretable tool for quantifying similarity in event history models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_00583
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Testing similarity of competing risks models by comparing transition probabilities
Lange, Zoe Kristin
Farhadizadeh, Maryam
Dette, Holger
Binder, Nadine
Methodology
Assessing whether two patient populations exhibit comparable event dynamics is essential for evaluating treatment equivalence, pooling data across cohorts, or comparing clinical pathways across hospitals or strategies. We introduce a statistical framework for formally testing the similarity of competing risks models based on transition probabilities, which represent the cumulative risk of each event over time. Our method defines a maximum-type distance between the transition probability matrices of two multistate processes and employs a novel constrained parametric bootstrap test to evaluate similarity under both administrative and random right censoring. We theoretically establish the asymptotic validity and consistency of the bootstrap test. Through extensive simulation studies, we show that our method reliably controls the type I error and achieves higher statistical power than existing intensity-based approaches. Applying the framework to routine clinical data of prostate cancer patients treated with radical prostatectomy, we identify the smallest similarity threshold at which patients with and without prior in-house fusion biopsy exhibit comparable readmission dynamics. The proposed method provides a robust and interpretable tool for quantifying similarity in event history models.
title Testing similarity of competing risks models by comparing transition probabilities
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00583