Effectiveness of (18)F-FDG PET/CT in the diagnosis, staging and recurrence monitoring of Ewing sarcoma family of tumors: A meta-analysis of 23 studies

BACKGROUND: To investigate the value of positron emission tomography (PET) and PET/computed tomography (CT) using fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose ((18)F-FDG) in the diagnosis, staging, restaging and recurrence monitoring of Ewing sarcoma family of tumors (ESFTs), a meta-analysis was performed through systematically searching PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Central library to retrieve articles. METHODS: After screening and diluting out the articles that met inclusion criteria to be used for statistical analysis the pooled evaluation indexes including sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic odd ratio (DOR) as well as the summary receiver operating characteristic curve (SROC) were calculated involving diagnostic data (true positive, false positive, false negative, and true negative) extracted from original studies. RESULTS: Screening determined that out of 2007, 23 studies involving a total of 524 patients were deemed viable for inclusion in the meta-analysis. The results of the analysis showed that the sensitivity and specificity were at 86% and 80%, respectively. Additionally, a satisfactory accuracy of (18)F-FDG PET and PET/CT was observed in detecting ESFT recurrence, lung metastasis, and osseous metastasis. CONCLUSION: This meta-analysis suggests that (18)F-FDG PET and PET/CT with an extremely high accuracy could be considered a valuable method for detecting distant metastasis and post-operational recurrence of ESFT, which might have a profound impact on the development of treatment protocols for ESFT.