Meta-analysis of CT-guided transthoracic needle biopsy for the evaluation of the ground-glass opacity pulmonary lesions.

OBJECTIVE: This meta-analysis is to determine the overall diagnostic yield of CT-guided transthoracic needle biopsy (TNB) of ground-glass opacity (GGO) lesions. METHODS: A PubMed search was performed using "ground-glass opacity" crossed with "core biopsy" and "needle biopsy". Test performance characteristics with the use of forest plots, summary receiver operating characteristic curves and bivariate random effects models were summarized. Adverse events, if reported, were recorded. RESULTS: Our search identified 52 citations, of which 6 diagnostic studies evaluated 341 patients. Pooled specificity estimates were 0.94 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.84-0.98] and sensitivity estimates were 0.92 (95% CI, 0.88-0.95), respectively. The positive likelihood ratio was 11.27 (95% CI, 4.2-30.6), the negative likelihood ratio was 0.1 (95% CI, 0.06-0.19), the diagnostic odds ratio was 131.38 (95% CI, 39.6-436.0) and the area under the curve was 0.97. CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that the CT-guided TNB is likely to be a useful tool for tissue diagnosis and may serve as an alternative for further patient management with GGO lesions. However, considering the limited studies and patients included, large scale studies are needed to verify these findings. ADVANCES IN KNOWLEDGE: Some studies about CT-guided TNB of GGO lesions have been published, most have been small, single-institution case series. To our knowledge, our study is the first systematic analysis about CT-guided TNB of GGO lesions.