5. Pooled sensitivity and specificity of the conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) overall meta‐analysis and the sensitivity analyses.

Analysis	Sensitivity (95% CI)	Specificity (95% CI)
Overall meta‐analysis PCR	70% (37% to 90%)	95% (75% to 99%)
Exclusion of studies at 'high risk of bias' for patient selection	76% (31% to 96%)	91% (60% to 98%)
Exclusion of studies at 'high risk of bias' for reference standard	87% (44% to 98%)	97% (60% to 100%)
Exclusion of studies that reported the use of antibiotics	71% (34% to 92%)	93% (71% to 99%)
Meta‐analysis with the lower MAT threshold dataset	70% (36% to 90%)	95% (75% to 99%)
Exclusion of studies that were only reported as abstracts	74% (40% to 93%)	96% (74% to 99%)

CI: confidence intervals; MAT: microscopic agglutination test.