Supplementary materials: Novel and existing flexible survival methods for network meta-analyses

These are peer-reviewed supplementary materials for the article 'Novel and existing flexible survival methods for network meta-analyses' published in the Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research.Supplementary dataFigure 1: Overall survival hazard plots in evidence network for the pooled Checkmate 017-057 trials comparing nivolumab with docetaxelFigure 2: Network of evidenceFigure 3: Log cumulative hazard plots and Schoenfeld plotsFigure 4: Predicted survival best fitting reduced models and corresponding 95% credible interval on therapy with longest predicted survivalTable 1: Overview of the percentiles related to placements of knots and the corresponding uncensored survival times in the considered NMA datasetAim: Technical Support Document 21 discusses trial-based, flexible relative survival models. The authors generalized flexible relative survival models to the network meta-analysis (NMA) setting while accounting for different treatment-effect specifications. Methods: The authors compared the standard parametric model with mixture, mixture cure and nonmixture cure, piecewise, splines and fractional polynomial models. The optimal treatment-effect parametrization was defined in two steps. First, all models were run with treatment effects on all parameters and subsequently the optimal model was defined by removing uncertain treatment effects, for which the parameter was smaller than its standard deviation. The authors used a network in previously treated advanced non-small-cell lung cancer. Results: Flexible model based NMAs impact fit and incremental mean survival and they increase corresponding uncertainty. Treatment-effect specification impacts incremental survival, reduces uncertainty and improves the fit statistic. Conclusion: Extrapolation techniques already available for individual trials can now be used for NMAs to ensure that the most plausible extrapolations are being used for health technology assessment submissions.

本数据集为发表于《比较疗效研究杂志》的论文《新颖与现有网络荟萃分析中的柔性生存方法》的同行评审补充材料。补充数据：图1：Checkmate 017-057试验中尼伏单抗与多西他赛比较的证据网络总生存期风险图；图2：证据网络；图3：对数累积风险图与Schoenfeld图；图4：预测生存的最佳拟合简化模型及其对应的95%可信区间，用于预测最长生存期的治疗；表1：NMA数据集中与结点放置相关的百分位数概述及其对应的未删除生存时间。目的：技术支持文档21讨论了基于试验的柔性相对生存模型。作者将柔性相对生存模型推广至网络荟萃分析（NMA）场景，并考虑了不同的治疗效果设定。方法：作者比较了标准参数模型与混合、混合治愈和非混合治愈、分段、样条和分数多项式模型。最佳治疗效果参数化定义分为两个步骤。首先，所有模型均使用所有参数的治疗效果运行，然后通过去除参数小于其标准差的不可靠治疗效果来定义最佳模型。作者使用了先前接受过治疗的晚期非小细胞肺癌的网络。结果：基于柔性模型的NMA对拟合和增量平均生存期产生影响，并增加了相应的不确定性。治疗效果设定影响增量生存，降低不确定性并改善拟合统计量。结论：已适用于个别试验的外推技术现在也可用于NMA，以确保在卫生技术评估提交中使用最合理的推论。