Axillary lymph node metastasis detection by magnetic resonance imaging in patients with breast cancer: A meta‐analysis

BACKGROUND: The study was conducted to evaluate the diagnostic performance of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the detection of axillary lymph node metastasis in patients with breast cancer. METHODS: PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, Cochrane Embase, Chinese Biomedical Literature, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases were searched for open published studies relevant to the use of MRI for the detection of axillary lymph node metastasis in breast cancer patients. The pooled diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, and the symmetric receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve was calculated by combining the individual data extracted from 26 included studies. RESULTS: The pooled diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of MRI to detect axillary lymph node metastasis in patients with breast cancer were 0.77 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.75–0.80) and 0.90 (95% CI 0.89–0.91), respectively. The pooled positive and negative likelihood ratios were 7.67 (95% CI 5.09–11.53) and 0.23 (95% CI 0.17–0.32), respectively, by random effect method. The area under the SROC curve was 0.93 for MRI to detect axillary lymph node metastasis in breast cancer patients. CONCLUSION: With high sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve, MRI is an effective method to differentiate metastatic axillary lymph node in breast cancer patients, which can provide useful information for surgical procedure selection.