• E Concannon, S McHugh, D A Healy, E Kavanagh, P Burke, M Clarke Moloney, and S R Walsh.
• Vascular Research Unit, Department of Vascular Surgery, University Hospital Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
• Int. J. Clin. Pract. 2014 Sep 1; 68 (9): 1122-9.

BackgroundUltrasonography is increasingly used by clinicians to identify abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA). We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis comparing the accuracy of non-radiologist performed ultrasound (NRPUS) for AAA disease to the 'gold standard' of radiologist performed aortic imaging (RPI), intra-operative findings or postmortem findings.MethodsCochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, SCOPUS-V.4, trial registries, conference proceedings, and article reference lists were searched to identify studies comparing NRPUS with RPI as the reference standard. Data abstracted from eligible studies was used to generate 2 × 2 contingency tables allowing calculation of pooled sensitivity and specificity values.Results11 studies (944 patients) evaluated NRPUS for AAA detection. NRPUS had a pooled sensitivity of 0.975 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.942-0.992] for AAA detection and a pooled specificity of 0.989 (95% CI, 0.979-0.995).ConclusionsNon-radiologist performed ultrasound achieves acceptable sensitivity and specificity for both detection and measurement of AAA. There was no evidence of significant heterogeneity with respect to pooled sensitivity or specificity.© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

12 keywords...

hide…