Table 3.

Subgroup analysis of diagnostic performance of 18F-FDG PET/CT.

Covariate/subgroup	Studies, n	Sensitivity (95% CI)	P value	Specificity (95% CI)	P value
Number of patients included			0.05		0.85
>50	2	0.88 (0.80–0.96)		0.85 (0.65–1.00)
≤50	5	0.89 (0.83–0.96)		0.90 (0.76 - 1.00)
Ethnicity			0.15		0.23
Asian	3	0.90 (0.82–0.98)		0.94 (0.84–1.00)
The rest	4	0.89 (0.82–0.96)		0.81 (0.64–0.98)
Treatment			0.07		0.30
Surg, Surg+Cx, Surg+Cx+RTx	4	0.89 (0.82–0.95)		0.93 (0.84–1.00)
Surg	3	0.90 (0.82–0.98)		0.79 (0.59–0.99)
Study			0.91		0.02
Retro	6	0.89 (0.85–0.93)		0.89 (0.83–0.95)
Pro	1			0.47 (0.23–0.71)
Analysis		0.77 (0.60–0.95)	0.80		0.81
LB	1
PB	6			0.86 (0.58–1.00)
Image analysis		0.93 (0.85–1.00)	0.80		0.81
		0.88 (0.82–		0.90 (0.77–1.00)
		0.94)
Qualitative	1	0.93 (0.85–1.00)		0.86 (0.58–1.00)
Quantitative	6	0.88 (0.82–0.94)		0.93 (0.77–1.00)

PB: patient-based; LB: lesion-based; Pro: prospective; Retro: retrospective; Surg: surgery; Cx: chemotherapy; RTx: radiotherapy.