title: Shear wave elastography for differentiation of benign and malignant thyroid nodules: a meta-analysis.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this study was to assess the performance of shear wave elastography for identification of benign and malignant thyroid nodules using meta-analysis.
  
  
  METHODS
  PubMed, MEDLINE, Embase, the Cochrane Library, and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure were searched. Patients' clinical characteristics, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value were extracted. The diagnostic odds ratio and summary receiver operating characteristic curve were used to examine the accuracy of shear wave elastography. A meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the clinical utility of shear wave elastography for identification of benign and malignant thyroid nodules.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The summary sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of malignant thyroid nodules by shear wave elastography were 0.84 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.76-0.90) and 0.90 (95% CI, 0.87-0.92), respectively. The pooled positive likelihood ratio was 7.39 (95% CI, 4.09-13.35), and the negative likelihood ratio was 0.20 (95% CI, 0.13-0.29). The summary diagnostic odds ratio was 41.35 (95% CI, 17.38-98.41), and the summary area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.92 (Q* = 0.8538).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Shear wave elastography has high sensitivity and specificity in the evaluation of thyroid nodules and can potentially reduce unnecessary fine-needle aspiration biopsies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Oncology, Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, or Ting Niu, MD, PhD, Department of Hematology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, 610041 Chengdu, China. liuleihx@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Binglan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Xuelei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Nana
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xiaoxiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Jinrong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Ting
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Niu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D054459:Elasticity Imaging Techniques / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015995:Prevalence; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012307:Risk Factors; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013959:Thyroid Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis; D016606:Thyroid Nodule / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000453:epidemiology*
keywords: diagnosis; meta-analysis; shear wave elastography; thyroid nodules