A Systematic Review Of Diagnostic Tests For Pulmonary Embolism

Objectives To assess diagnostic tests for pulmonary embolism (PE) systematically so as to provide decision-making evidence for clinical screening and diagnosis. Materials and methods The electronic databases were searched,including Chinese Biomedicine Database (CBM), CNKI, MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, and CEBM/CCD. We handsearched the data from the references of all included studies, Chinese journals related to diagnosis and the proceeding of correlated conferences. Criteria for inclusion and exclusion were established according to validity criteria for diagnostic research published by the Cochrane Methods Group on Screening and Diagnostic Tests. The studies meeting the inclusion criteria were selected, and their methodological quality was assessed. Data of these studies were extracted via the data extraction form. Heterogeneity of the included articles was tested, which was used to select appropriate effect model to calculate pooled odds ratio (OR), likelihood ratio (LR), predictive value (PV), and the according 95%confidence intervals (CI). Summary Receiver Operating Characteristic (SROC) curve was performed and the area under the curve (AUC) was calculated. Finally, sensitivity analysis was performed. Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS and Revman 4.2 software.Results Fifty-four articles of 569 retrieved articles were included, with a total of 113 studies. Among them, 21 articels used pulmonary arteriography (gold standard)...