Estimating number of events from the Kaplan-Meier curve for incorporation in a literature-based meta-analysis: What you don't see you can't get!

In literature-based meta-analyses of time-to-event data, the number of even ts in the treated and control groups together with the total number of pati ents randomized to the two treatment arms are often used as summary statist ics. If interest is in mortality at a specified moment in time, the number of events can, in most cases, only be obtained from the Kaplan-Meier curve. The estimated number of events, however, is typically larger than the true number of events. The effect of this overestimation on the Mantel-Haenszel test and the odds ratio is studied in this paper. From these results, it c an be concluded that the number of events should not be estimated from the Kaplan-Meier curves for meta-analytic purposes unless virtually no patients are lost to follow-up or censored and there are still many patients at ris k in the two groups at the time at which the number of events is to be dete rmined.