  Background and Objective: The survival-agreement plot was proposed and
improved to assess the reliability of a quantitative measure. We propose the
use of survival analysis as an alternative non-parametric approach for
comparison of ordinal qualitative data.
  Study Design and Setting: Two case studies were presented. The first one is
related to a randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial to
investigate the safety and efficacy of silymarin/metionin for chronic hepatitis
C. The second one is a prospective study to identify gustatory alterations due
to chorda tympani nerve involvement in patients with chronic otitis media
without prior surgery.
  Results: No significant difference was detected between the two treatments
related to the chronic hepatitis C (p > 0.5). On the other hand, a significant
association was observed between the healthy side and the affected side of the
face of patients with chronic otitis media related to gustatory alterations (p
< 0.05).
  Conclusion: The proposed method can serve as an alternative procedure to
statistical test for comparison of samples from ordinal qualitative variables.
This approach has the advantage of being more familiar to clinical researchers.
