Win odds: An adaptation of the win ratio to include ties

The win ratio, a recently proposed measure for comparing the benefit of two treatment groups, allows ties in the data but ignores ties in the inference. In this article, we highlight some difficulties that this can lead to, and we propose to focus on the win odds instead, a modification of the win ratio which takes ties into account. We construct hypothesis tests and confidence intervals for the win odds, and we investigate their properties through simulations and in a case study. We conclude that the win odds should be preferred over the win ratio.