Numerous clinical trials show crizotinib has promising efficacy for anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients which trigger the substitution of traditional chemotherapy to be the current standard first-line treatment for these patients. Conversely, few reports systematically analyze toxicity of crizotinib. Hence, we performed a first meta-analysis to determine the risk of crizotinib-related severe adverse events (SAEs) and fatal adverse events (FAEs) in ALK positive NSCLC patients.A systematic literature search was conducted through December 2016 to identify clinical trials that reported crizotinib monotherapy in ALK-positive NSCLC patients. Data on crizotinib-related SAEs and FAEs were extracted from each study and pooled to determine the overall incidence and risk. Random-effects or fixed-effects models were conducted to calculate the summary incidence, relative risk (RR), and 95% CIs on basis of the heterogeneity of included studies.1,924 patients from 11 clinical trials were included. The overall incidence of SAEs and FAEs with crizotinib was 19.9% (95% CI, 14.1% to 23.7%; P < 0.001) and 1.4% (95% CI, 0.9% to 2.1%; P < 0.001), respectively. Meanwhile, Asian patients have lower incidence of SAEs (11.5%, 95% CI: 7.9% to 16.5%). However, significant differences of SAEs (RR: 0.97, 95% CI, 0.79 to 1.18; P = 0.76) and FAEs (RR: 2.24, 95% CI, 0.49 to 10.30; P = 0.30) were not detected between crizotinib monotherapy and chemotherapy.Crizotinib may not increase the risk of SAEs and FAEs in patients with ALK positive NSCLC compared with chemotherapy.