The diagnostic accuracy of TCT + HPV-DNA for cervical cancer: systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: This study sought to systematically analyze the clinical diagnostic value of tumor markers combined with ThinPrep cytologic test (TCT) and human papillomavirus (HPV) deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) detection for cervical cancer and pre-cancerous lesions. However, there is a lot of controversy in the field of TCT + HPV-DNA. Many people have mixed opinions on the accuracy of TCT + HPV-DNA, and there is no unified opinion. Therefore, it is necessary to further confirm the significance of this combined detection method in the early diagnosis of cervical cancer by applying meta method. METHODS: The Cochrane Library, PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM) databases were searched to retrieve studies. To assess the methodological quality of each study and potential risk of bias, QUADAS-2 Guidelines were used to evaluate the quality of all articles that met the inclusion criteria and data extraction of the included articles were performed, and a meta-analysis was performed of the included studies using Review Manager 5.2 software. RESULTS: A total of 5 studies were included in the study, and a total of 2,778 patients were included in the study, and there was no significant publication bias observed. The meta-analysis showed that there was a statistical difference in terms of the accuracy of the tumor markers combined with TCT in the detection of cervical cancer. The results were as follows: the pooled sensitivity (SEN) was 0.86 (95% CI: 0.75–0.93); the combined specificity (SPE) was 0.79 (95% CI: 0.57–0.92); the diagnostic performance of combined with thin-layer liquid-based cytology and HPV DNA detection in the diagnosis accuracy of cervical cancer by summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve analysis, result showed excellent diagnostic accuracy, with a combined area under the curve (AUC) of 0.90 (95% CI: 0.87–0.92). DISCUSSION: Tumor markers are important for the early diagnosis of cervical cancer. Combining the tumor markers with TCT and HPV DNA detection effectively improved the detection rate.