Causal inference on the difference of the restricted mean lifetime between two groups

Abstract

When comparing survival times between two treatment groups, it may be more appropriate to compare the restricted mean lifetime, i.e., the expectation of lifetime restricted to a time L, rather than mean lifetime in order to accommodate censoring. When the treatments are not assigned to patients randomly, as in observational studies, we also need to account for treatment imbalances in confounding factors. In this article, we propose estimators for the difference of the restricted mean lifetime between two groups that account for treatment imbalances in prognostic factors assuming a proportional hazards relationship. Large-sample properties of our estimators based on martingale theory for counting processes are also derived. Simulation studies were conducted to compare these estimators and to assess the adequacy of the large-sample approximations. Our methods are also applied to an observational database of acute coronary syndrome patients from Duke University Medical Center to estimate the treatment effect on the restricted mean lifetime over 5 years.