Efficiency considerations in the analysis of a competing‐risk problem

In many survival studies involving more than one failure mode the data collected include the failure times as well as the failure types. An analysis of these data for evidence of a treatment effect based on a logistic probability model for failure type sacrifices precision for simplicity. ignoring the information contained in the failure times. Alternatively, a competing‐risk analysis using a cause‐specific hazard model may make more efficient use of the available information, but involves additional assumptions and the possibility that the model selected may not be entirely correct. Aspects of this tradeoff between efficiency and simplicity are considered in the context of a two‐sample competing‐risk problem involving proportional hazards for the incidence of failure attributable to each of two different causes.