Accuracy of 11C-choline positron emission tomography in differentiating glioma recurrence from radiation necrosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis

OBJECTIVES: Distinguishing glioma recurrence from the necrosis after radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy is a crucial clinical issue, for the different diagnosis will lead to divergent treatments. The accurate judgment is barely achieved by conventional imaging methods. We therefore assume it is of need to exert a meta-analysis to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of 11C-choline positron emission tomography (PET), to achieve this goal. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We searched the PubMed, Embase, and Chinese Biomedical databases comprehensively to select eligible studies and assessed the quality of each article included (up to May 31, 2018). Fixed-effects models were used. Summary diagnostic accuracy of 11C-choline PET was obtained from pooled analysis. RESULTS: Five articles comprising 6 studies with total 118 patients (134 scans) were enrolled for the meta-analysis. There was no heterogeneity or publication bias among the included studies. The pooled sensitivity and specificity were 0.87 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.78, 0.93) and 0.820 (95% CI: 0.69, 0.91), respectively. The pooled diagnostic odds ratio was 35.50 (95% CI: 11.70, 107.75). The area under the curve was 0.9170 (95% CI: 0.8504, 0.9836), with Q∗ index equaling to 0.8499. The diagnostic accuracy of each subgroup showed no statistical differences with that of the overall group. CONCLUSIONS: This meta-analysis indicated 11C-choline has high diagnostic accuracy for the identification of tumor relapse from radiation induced necrosis in gliomas.