Abstract
BackgroundAnalysis of clinical studies often necessitates multiple graphical representations of the results. Many professional software packages are available for this purpose. Most packages are either only commercially available or hard to use especially if one aims to generate or customize a huge number of similar graphical outputs. We developed a new, freely available software tool called KMWin (Kaplan-Meier for Windows) facilitating Kaplan-Meier survival time analysis. KMWin is based on the statistical software environment R and provides an easy to use graphical interface. Survival time data can be supplied as SPSS (sav), SAS export (xpt) or text file (dat), which is also a common export format of other applications such as Excel. Figures can directly be exported in any graphical file format supported by R.ResultsOn the basis of a working example, we demonstrate how to use KMWin and present its main functions. We show how to control the interface, customize the graphical output, and analyse survival time data. A number of comparisons are performed between KMWin and SPSS regarding graphical output, statistical output, data management and development. Although the general functionality of SPSS is larger, KMWin comprises a number of features useful for survival time analysis in clinical trials and other applications. These are for example number of cases and number of cases under risk within the figure or provision of a queue system for repetitive analyses of updated data sets. Moreover, major adjustments of graphical settings can be performed easily on a single window.ConclusionsWe conclude that our tool is well suited and convenient for repetitive analyses of survival time data. It can be used by non-statisticians and provides often used functions as well as functions which are not supplied by standard software packages. The software is routinely applied in several clinical study groups.
Highlights
Clinical studies often necessitate repetitive data analyses and the need of multiple graphical representations of the results
We developed the new software tool KMWin (Kaplan-Meier for Windows) for graphical presentation of results from Kaplan-Meier survival time analysis
The status bar of the programme is located at the bottom of the window and assists in creating plots by displaying hints
Summary
Clinical studies often necessitate repetitive data analyses and the need of multiple graphical representations of the results. Many professional software packages for data analysis and graphical representation are available such as SPSS [1], SAS [2] or R [3,4] These packages are either only commercially available or do not satisfy certain needs, such as displaying number of cases under risk and number of cases within the graphical output, inversion of survival time curves or adjustment of p-value accuracy. These packages are complicated to use for non-statisticians, especially if one aims to construct series of highquality figures. Figures can directly be exported in any graphical file format supported by R
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