Background: Recently, some studies assessed the clinical utility of miniprobe endoscopic ultrasonography for prediction of invasion depth of early gastric cancer (GC). However, the results remain inconsistent.
Objectives: We conducted a meta-analysis to assess the clinical utility of miniprobe endoscopic ultrasonography for diagnostic of invasion depth of early GC.
Methods: We systematically searched several online electronic databases including PubMed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Web of Science, Embase, and Wanfang from initial library to July 20, 2018, identifying the study about miniprobe endoscopic ultrasonography for diagnostic of invasion depth of early GC. Bivariate mixed effects models were used to calculate the sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) with theirs 95% confidence intervals (CIs).
Results: Nineteen studies with 3401 patients were included in the meta-analysis. The bivariate mixed effect model indicated that the overall diagnostic sensitivity was 0.86 (95%CI: 0.79-0.91) and the specificity was 0.73 (95%CI: 0.66-0.78). The area under the curve was 0.84 (95%CI: 0.81-0.87). We also estimated the other pooled parameters as follows: the pooled PLR was 3.13 (95%CI: 2.55-3.84), the pooled NLR was 0.19 (95%CI: 0.13-0.28), the diagnostic score was 2.78 (95%CI: 2.33-3.23), and the diagnostic odds ratio was 16.1 (95%CI: 10.23-25.36). Subgroup analysis indicated that ethnicity may be the decisive factor on heterogeneity.
Conclusions: The present study indicated that the miniprobe endoscopic ultrasonography had a moderate diagnostic ability for invasion depth of early GC. The diagnostic utility was influenced by ethnicity. Further research is required to confirm the present findings and explore the potential factors of heterogeneity.