Is ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT an Accurate Way to Detect Lymph Node Metastasis in Colorectal Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Figure 3

Sensitivity and specificity of ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT in diagnosis of lymph node metastasis in colorectal cancer. Forest plot of sensitivity reported in each study. Each study is identified by the name of the first author and year of publication, with circles representing individual study point estimates, size of each circle indicating relative contribution to data pooling (inverse variance weighting), horizontal lines indicating 95% CIs, and dashed vertical lines representing 95% CIs for pooled sensitivity and specificity. (a) Fagan’s nomogram for the calculation of posttest probabilities. A pretest probability of 50% diagnostic tool was fixed, which was estimated by the number of symptomatic cases in selected studies. (b) ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT had a posttest probability of 82%. The results were obtained by the following calculations: pretest odds = prevalence/1-prevalence; posttest odds = pretest odds × negative likelihood ratio (LR−) (LR+); posttest.

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