Thyroid Imaging Reporting And Data System In The Diagnostic Value Of Thyroid Nodules: A Meta-analysis

Objective: To assess the overall diagnostic accuracy of the thyroid imaging reporting and data system(TI-RADS) classification in the diagnosis of benign and malignant thyroid nodules.Methods: Data were collected from the ISI Web of Science, Pubmed, Medline, Embase, CBM, CNKI, VIP, and Wanfang electronic databases, which was from April 1994 to April 2015. Researches included in this study are diagnostic experiments, required similar research methods that must consist of the purpose, design and correct statistical methods. Its findings are available to gain the number of true positive, false positive, false negative and true negative. Quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies(QUADAS) was used to assess the quality of articles. All the analysis in this study was carried out by Meta Di Sc(Version 1.4) and STATA software(Version 12.0). The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, diagnostic odds ratio(DOR), and summary receiver operating characteristic curve(SROC) were used to assess the diagnostic accuracy. Meta-regression and subgroup analysis were conducted to explore the source of heterogeneity. Publication bias were judged by Deek’s test.Results: A total of 6 studies with 8799 thyroid nodules enrolled met the inclusion criteria in this Meta-analysis. TI-RADS had a pooled sensitivity of 0.82(95%CI: 0.81-0.84), a pooled specificity of 0.69(95%CI: 0.68-0.70), a pooled positive likelihood ratio of 4.18(95%CI: 2.63-6.67), a pooled negative likelihood ratio of 0.15(95%CI: 0.07-0.30), a pooled DOR of 29.59(95%CI: 12.34-70.94). The overall area under the SROC was 0.920(Q~﹡=0.853).Conclusions: In the ultrasonic examination of thyroid nodules, TI-RADS has a good application value in the diagnosis of benign and malignant thyroid nodules.