• 1. Ultrasound Diagnosis Medicine Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi 830011, China;
  • 2. Ultrasound Diagnosis Medicine Center, The Second Teaching Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450000, China;
Nadire·Tieliewuhan, Email: nadire607@163.com
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Objective To systematically review the clinical value of ultrasonographic elastography (UE) for the differential diagnosis of benign/malignant thyroid nodules. Methods We comprehensively searched the databases including The Cochrane Library (Issue2, 2013), PubMed, EMbase, CNKI, WanFang Data, Medalink, VIP and CBM from inception to the December of 2013, for including clinical research reports of determining thyroid nodules using ultrasonographic elastography. Literature screening according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, data extraction and methodological quality assessment were completed by two reviewers independently. Then Meta-DiSc software (version 1.4) was used for pooling analysis. Results A total of 35 studies including 4 127 patients were included. The results of metaanalysis showed that, specificity, sensitivity, positive likelihood radio, negative likelihood radio and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) were 0.89 (0.88 to 0.90), 0.88 (0.86 to 0.90), 6.37 (5.44 to7.47), 0.13 (0.11 to 0.16) and 58.72 (43.12 to 79.98), respectively; and the area under SROC curve (AUC) was 0.936 9. Conclusion Current evidence shows that ultrasonographic elastography has fairly high sensitivity (88%) and specificity (89%) in differential diagnosis of benign/malignant thyroid nodules. The positive rate in the malignant thyroid group is 58.72 times higher that in benign thyroid cancer with better efficacy in differential diagnosis, so ultrasonographic elastography is of effective and feasible diagnostic value for thyroid benign/malignant nodules.

Citation: MAYuan-yuan, ZHANGXiao-guang, Palida·Paerhati, MUYang, Nadire·Tieliewuhan. Value of Ultrasonographic Elastography in Differential Diagnosis of Benign/Malignant Thyroid Nodules in China: A Meta-Analysis. Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2014, 14(5): 584-591. doi: 10.7507/1672-2531.20140097 Copy

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