Abstract
Objective: This article aims to evaluate the diagnostic value of68Gallium-PSMA positron emission tomography/computerized tomography (68Ga-PSMA PET/CT) for lymph node (LN) staging in patients with prostate cancer (PCa) by a meta-analysis of diagnostic tests.Methods: We systematically retrieved articles from PubMed, Embase, Web of Science with a limited period from January 1, 2016, to December 1, 2019, and Stata 15 was used for calculation and statistical analyses.Results: Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative likelihood ratio (PLR, NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) be used to evaluate the diagnostic value. A total of 10 studies were included in our meta-analysis, which included 701 individuals. The results of each consolidated summary are as follows: sensitivity of 0.84 (95% CI: 0.55-0.95), specificity of 0.95 (95% CI: 0.87-0.98), PLR and NLR was 17.19 (95% CI: 6.27, 47.17) and 0.17 (95% CI: 0.05-0.56), respectively. DOR of 4.6 (95% CI: 2.91-6.30), AUC of 0.97 (95% CI: 0.95-0.98).Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT has a high overall diagnostic value for LN staging in patients with moderate and high-risk PCa. But our conclusions still require a larger sample size, multi-center prospective randomized controlled trial to verify.