Accuracy of whole‐body PET and PET‐CT in initial M staging of head and neck cancer: A meta‐analysis

BACKGROUND: A meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the accuracy of whole-body positron emission tomography (PET) and PET-CT in initial M staging of head and neck cancer. METHODS: After a systematic review of English language studies, sensitivity, specificity, and other measures of whole-body PET and PET-CT were pooled. Summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curves were also used to summarize overall test performance. RESULTS: Eight PET and 7 PET-CT studies were identified. The pooled sensitivity estimates for PET and PET-CT were 0.848 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.776-0.905) and 0.875 (95% CI, 0.787-0.936). The pooled specificity estimates were 0.952 (95% CI, 0.933-0.967) and 0.950 (95% CI, 0.931-0.964). The Q* index estimates for PET-CT (0.9409) were not significantly higher than for PET (0.9154; p > .05). CONCLUSION: Whole-body PET and PET-CT have good diagnostic performance in initial M staging of head and neck cancer; although PET-CT tends to have higher accuracy than PET.