Background: The aim of this study is to evaluate the diagnostic value of prostate-specific antigen density (PSAD) test in detecting prostate cancer.
Methods: We searched public databases including PubMed, Medline, Springer, Elsevier Science Direct, Cochrane Library, and Google scholar before June 2015. In this meta-analysis, specificity, positive LR, negative LR, and dOR of PSAD test in patients with prostate cancer were analyzed from published studies. We applied Meta-DiSc 1.4 and Stata 11.0 software to the meta-analysis.
Results: A total of 11 separate studies consisting of 1821 participants were considered in the meta-analysis. The results of this meta-analysis indicated that sensitivity, specificity, positive Likelihood Ratio (LR), negative LR, and Diagnostic Odds Ratio (dOR) of PSAD test for prostate cancer were 0.73 (95% CI = 0.69 to 0.78), 0.64 (95% CI = 0.61 to 0.66), 2.13 (95% CI = 1.64 to 2.76), 0.45 (95% CI = 0.35 to 0.57), and 5.87 (95% CI = 4.42 to 7.81), respectively. It also showed that the AUC and Q* index were 0.77 and 0.71, respectively. The results of the Egger's linear regression test showed that no publication bias existed (p > 0.05).
Conclusions: In general, our results show that specificity, positive LR, negative LR, dOR, the area under the curve (AUC), and Q * index of PSAD test may be appropriate for detecting prostate cancer.