Diagnostic Accuracy of Fluorine-18-Fluorodeoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography in the Evaluation of the Primary Tumor in Patients with Cholangiocarcinoma: A Meta-Analysis

Table 4

Quality assessment of the included studies.

First author/year	Spectrum of patients	Consecutive or random selection of patients	Reference standard	Application of reference standard regardless of indexed test	Enough explanation of the index test to ensure reproducibility	Independent blind comparison between index test and reference standard
Fritscher-Ravens, 2001 [6]	Patients with obstructive jaundice and hilar lesions	Yes	Histopathology	Yes	Yes	Yes
Kluge, 2001 [7]	26 patients with CCa, 8 patients with benign bile duct stenosis, and 20 controls	No	Histopathology	Yes	Yes	Yes
Kato, 2002 [8]	Patients with bile duct cancer	N/A	Histopathology	Yes	Yes	Yes
Kim, 2003 [9]	Patients with intrahepatic CCa	N/A	Histopathology or clinical and radiological findings	Yes	Yes	No blinding
Anderson, 2004 [10]	Patients suspected of CCa or gallbladder carcinoma	Yes	Histopathology or cytopathology	Yes	Yes	No information regarding blinding
Reinhardt, 2005 [11]	Patients with extrahepatic bile duct strictures on endoscopic retrograde cholangiography	Yes	Histopathology or cytopathology and imaging criteria and follow-up	No (patients with negative PET and cytology did not undergo surgery)	Yes	No
Wakabayashi, 2005 [12]	Patients with suspicious malignant biliary stricture	N/A	Histopathology (biopsy and surgical findings)	Yes	Yes	N/A
Petrowsky, 2006 [13]	Patients with suspected or proven CCa or gallbladder cancer	Yes	Histopathology	Yes	Yes	Yes
Prytz, 2006 [14]	Patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis within 2 weeks after listing for liver transplantation and with no evidence of malignancy on CT, magnetic resonance imaging, or ultrasonography	Yes	Histology of explanted livers	Yes	Yes	Yes
Nishiyama, 2007 [15]	Patients with biliary stricture who underwent PET imaging	Yes	Histopathology or cytology	Yes	Yes	Yes
Corvera, 2008 [16]	Patients with clinical diagnosis of biliary tract cancers	N/A	Histopathology	Yes	Yes	No
Furukawa, 2008 [17]	Patients with suspected extrahepatic biliary cancers (bile duct dilatation and/or mass lesions detected by ultrasonography and CT)	N/A	Histopathology and follow-up	Yes	Yes	No (no blinding)
Kim, 2008 [18]	Patients with suspected CCa	Yes	Histopathology or follow-up	Yes	Yes	Yes
Li, 2008 [19]	Patients with clinically suspected or already established diagnosis of hilar CCa	N/A	Histopathology	Yes	Yes	N/A
Moon, 2008 [20]	Patients with suspected CCa	Yes	Histopathology, cytopathology, or follow-up	Yes	Yes	Yes
Lee, 2010 [21]	Patients with suspected CCa or gallbladder cancer	N/A	Histopathology or follow-up	Yes	Yes	Yes
Alkhawaldeh, 2011 [22]	Heterogeneous patients including patients with suspected CCa, patients with positive cytology for CCa, and patients with negative cytology	No	Histopathology or follow-up	Yes	Yes	N/A
Kitamura, 2011 [23]	Patients with extrahepatic bile duct cancer	Yes	Histopathology	Yes	Yes	No
Ruys, 2011 [24]	Patients highly suspected of hilar CCa	Yes	Histopathology	Yes	Yes	Yes
Yamada, 2012 [25]	Patients with diagnosis of cancer of biliary tract	Yes	Histopathology	Yes	Yes	No
Albazaz, 2013 [3]	Patients with primary biliary tumors	Yes	Histopathology	Yes	Yes	Yes
Choi, 2013 [1]	Patients with suspected extrahepatic malignancy based on imaging studies	Yes	Histopathology or follow-up	Yes	Yes	Yes
Lee, 2013 [2]	Patients with confirmed biliary duct or gallbladder cancers	N/A	Histopathology or follow-up	Yes	Yes	N/A

CCa: cholangiocarcinoma.