Aim: We aim to assess the diagnostic value of contrast-enhanced endoscopic ultrasound (CE-EUS) for pancreatic cancer and inflammatory lesions by pooling current evidence.
Materials and methods: A systematical search of PubMed, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library was performed from inception to January 2016. Two authors independently screened and extracted detailed data from included studies. A random effect model was adopted to estimate the pooled sensitivity, specificity in order to determine the diagnostic ablitity of CE-EUS. Furthermore, we conducted the meta-regression and subgroup analyses to explore possible heterogeneity.
Results: Eighteen eligible studies enrolling 1668 patients were finally included in the study. The pooled sensitivity of CE-EUS for distinguishing pancreatic cancers from solid inflammatory masses was 0.93 (95% CI, 0.91-0.94), and the specificity was 0.88 (95% CI, 0.84-0.90). The area under summary receiver operating characteristic curve yielded 0.97. No publication bias was observed by Deeks' funnel plot in current meta-analysis.
Conclusions: We provided evidence that CE-EUS is a promising modality for differential diagnosis of pancreatic adenocarcinomas. Further multicenter prospective studies should be carried out to certify its utility.
Keywords: contrast-enhanced EUS; contrast-enhanced doppler EUS; contrast-enhanced harmonic EUS; pancreatic adenocarcinomas.