A non-linear optimisation method to extract summary statistics from Kaplan-Meier survival plots using the published P value.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Meta-analyses of studies evaluating survival (time-to-event) outcomes are a powerful technique to assess the strength of evidence for a given disease or treatment. However, these studies rely on the adequate reporting of summary statistics in the source articles to facilitate further analysis. Unfortunately, many studies, especially within the field of prognostic research do not report such statistics, making secondary analyses challenging. Consequently, methods have been developed to infer missing statistics from the commonly published Kaplan-Meier (KM) plots but are liable to error especially when the published number at risk is not included.

Methods

We therefore developed a method using non-linear optimisation (nlopt) that only requires the KM plot and the comm

SUBMITTER: Irvine AF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7596943 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature