Assessing the Prognostic Value of the Automated Bone Scan Index for Prostate Cancer—Reply

In Reply We thank Sun and colleagues for their interest and comments regarding our work. We agree that restricted mean survival time (RMST) analysis is a recent and valuable statistical tool and agree that the RMST may permit an alternative method of visualization and comparison of group differences over time using means rather than medians. We can confirm that their RMST estimates are correct across quartile 1 to quartile 4, showing a difference of 10.4 months (95% CI, 8.0-12.9 months) but smaller differences between individual sequential quartiles ranging from 1.7 to 5.9 months. We also agree that the RMST procedure for our specific automated bone scan index (aBSI) data set provides good discrimination across aBSI quartiles and thank Sun et al for pointing out this method of analysis for stratification schemes. We will consider this method in future studies of aBSI and other prognostic factors in prostate cancer.

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