Clinical usefulness of 18 F-FDG PET/CT for the detection of distant metastases in patients with non-small cell lung cancer at initial staging: a meta-analysis.

Background: We undertook a meta-analysis to evaluate the clinical usefulness of 18 F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (18 F-FDG PET/CT) for the detection of distant metastases in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at initial staging.

Materials and methods: All topic-related studies were comprehensively searched in the MEDLINE and Embase databases. We obtained the summary estimates and constructed the summary receiver operating characteristic curve for 18 F-FDG PET/CT using the bivariate regression model.

Results: Across 10 studies (1333 patients), the sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, and negative likelihood ratio for 18 F-FDG PET/CT were 0.81 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.63-0.92), 0.96 (95% CI = 0.94-0.98), 22.9 (95% CI = 13.3-39.5), and 0.20 (95% CI = 0.09-0.42), respectively. Overall weighted area under the curve was 0.97 (95% CI = 0.96-0.98).

Conclusion: 18 F-FDG PET/CT has a good diagnostic performance for distant metastasis staging in patients with NSCLC at initial staging.