Introduction: Many systematic reviews with survival or other time to event (TTE) endpoints collect/extract the total number of patients and events at a fixed point in time and use these to calculate odds ratios (OR). A number of software packages support this type of analysis and associated graphical presentation of results. However, ORs calculated in this way relate only to the point in time at which they are calculated and may not make the most efficient and complete use of the information reported. More appropriate manipulation of summary statistics can provide a hazard ratio (HR) or a reasonable estimation of it, representing the entire survival experience and taking account of censoring. As far as we are aware, no software currently supports this approach to meta-analysis.

Objective: To develop user friendly software that calculates HRs, making efficient use of available TTE statistics including log HRs, HRs or log rank 0-E's plus variances, chi-square and p-values. Alternatively, if none of these are available to use survival data at multiple time points. To display these results in a standard graphical format and if appropriate to produce survival curves.

Methods: Development has been in Microsoft Visual Basic which offers rapid application development and good interface design capabilities. A Microsoft Access database is used to store data.

Results: We have developed easy to use software that allows researchers to input the summary statistics available for each individual trial, using whichever combination of these gives the best estimated HR for that trial. Using this, an estimate of the overall HR can be made. The software also implements tests for heterogeneity, interaction and trend. Facilities for subsetting trials, scaling, labelling, and choice of output are also supported. Demonstration software will be shown.

Discussion: This software will enable researchers to do more sensitive TTE analyses for survival type endpoints based on summary data.