Fig. 2

Comparison of all-cause mortality (a) and recurrence (b) between the early surgery and late surgery groups using the random-effects model in the original studies from the reviewed meta-analysis. The left portion of the figure shows the studies analyzed with their corresponding hazard ratios and lower and upper limits. The right portion of the figure shows a forest plot of the data. The horizontal lines represent the values within the 95% CI of the underlying effects. The vertical line indicates a hazard ratio of 1. CI = confidence interval; HR = hazard ratio; IV = inverse variance