The DOI matches its Crossref record; 7 of the 7 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A practical guide to understanding Kaplan‐Meier curves
Open accessAbstract
In 1958, Edward L. Kaplan and Paul Meier collaborated to publish a seminal paper on how to deal with incomplete observations. Subsequently, the Kaplan‐Meier curves and estimates of survival data have become a familiar way of dealing with differing survival times (times‐to‐event), especially when not all the subjects continue in the study. “Survival” times need not relate to actual survival with death being the event; the “event” may be any event of interest. Kaplan‐Meier analyses are also used in nonmedical disciplines. The purpose of this article is to explain how Kaplan‐Meier curves are generated and analyzed. Throughout this article, we will discuss Kaplan‐Meier estimates in the context of “survival” before the event of interest. Two small groups of hypothetical data are used as examples in order for the reader to clearly see how the process works. These examples also illustrate the crucially important point that comparative analysis depends upon the whole curve and not upon isolated points. © 2010 American Academy of Otolaryngology‐Head and Neck Surgery Foundation. All rights reserved.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Nonparametric Estimation from Incomplete Observations
Kaplan, E. L., & Meier, P. (1992) · Springer Series in Statistics · doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-4380-9_25 · Cited by 45,181
Practical Statistics for Medical Research.
Walter, S. D., & Altman, D. G. (1992) · Biometrics · doi:10.2307/2532320 · Cited by 11,668
Practical Statistics for Medical Research
Altman, D. G. (1990) · doi:10.1201/9780429258589 · Cited by 10,668
Spiess, P. E., Lee, A. K., Leibovici, D., Wang, X., Do, K., & Pisters, L. L. (2006) · Cancer · doi:10.1002/cncr.21979 · Cited by 1,930
Survival of Patients with Stage I Lung Cancer Detected on CT Screening
(2006) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa060476 · Cited by 1,706
Clinical Epidemiology: The Architecture of Clinical Research.
(1985) · Annals of Internal Medicine · doi:10.7326/0003-4819-103-4-649_2 · Cited by 949
Cautionary Note Regarding the Use of CIs Obtained From Kaplan-Meier Survival Curves
Carter, R. E., & Huang, P. (2008) · Journal of Clinical Oncology · doi:10.1200/jco.2008.18.8011 · Cited by 15
Cited by
An inflammatory cytokine signature predicts COVID-19 severity and survival
Del Valle, D. M., Kim-Schulze, S., Huang, H.-H., Beckmann, N. D., Nirenberg, S., Wang, B., Lavin, Y., Swartz, T. H., Madduri, D., Stock, A., et al. (2020) · Nature Medicine · doi:10.1038/s41591-020-1051-9 · Cited by 2,605
Lánczky, A., & Győrffy, B. (2021) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/27633 · Cited by 1,694
Pratap, A., Neto, E. C., Snyder, P., Stepnowsky, C., Elhadad, N., Grant, D., Mohebbi, M. H., Mooney, S., Suver, C., Wilbanks, J., et al. (2020) · npj Digital Medicine · doi:10.1038/s41746-020-0224-8 · Cited by 410
Kim, E. H., Jenness, J. L., Miller, A. B., Halabi, R., de Zambotti, M., Bagot, K. S., Baker, F. C., & Pratap, A. (2023) · JAMA Network Open · doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.5681 · Cited by 53
Thompson, A., Winsper, C., Marwaha, S., Haynes, J., Alvarez-Jimenez, M., Hetrick, S., Realpe, A., Vail, L., Dawson, S., & Sullivan, S. A. (2018) · BJPsych Open · doi:10.1192/bjo.2018.17 · Cited by 44
Metadata
- Authors
- Rich, J. T., Neely, J. G., Paniello, R. C., Voelker, C. C. J., Nussenbaum, B., & Wang, E. W.
- Venue
- Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2010-09
- Volume
- 143
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 331-336
- ISSN
- 0161-6439 (ISSN-L)
- 0194-5998
- 1097-6817
- OpenAlex
- W2148974484
- Cited by
- 962
- References
- 7
- FWCI
- 2.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A practical guide to understanding Kaplan‐Meier curves. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.otohns.2010.05.007
- The paper
- Rich, J. T., Neely, J. G., Paniello, R. C., Voelker, C. C. J., Nussenbaum, B., & Wang, E. W. (2010). A practical guide to understanding Kaplan‐Meier curves. Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.otohns.2010.05.007
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.