Identification of the minimum effective dose for right-censored survival data

In this paper, we consider identifying the minimum effective dose (MED) in a dose–response study when survival data are subject to random right-censorship, where the MED is defined to be the smallest dose level under study that has survival advantage over the zero-dose control. To this end, we suggest single-step-down testing procedures based on three different types of weighted logrank statistics, respectively. The comparative results of a Monte Carlo error rate and power/bias study for a variety of survival and censoring distributions are then presented and discussed. The application of the testing procedures for identifying the MED is finally illustrated by using a numerical example of prostate cancer data. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.