Ultrasound, computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging - which is preferred for acute appendicitis in children? A Meta-analysis

Abstract

Background

There is no established consensus about the relative accuracies of US, CT and MRI in childhood appendicitis.

Objective

To compare, through meta-analysis, the accuracies of US, CT and MRI for clinically suspected acute appendicitis in children.

Materials and methods

PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library were searched. After study selection, data extraction and quality assessment, the sensitivity, specificity and the area under the curve of summary receiver operating characteristic were calculated and compared.

Results

Twenty-seven articles including 29 studies met the inclusion criteria, including 19 studies (9,170 patients) of US, 6 studies (928 patients) of CT and 4 studies (990 patients) of MRI. The analysis showed that the area under the receiver operator characteristics curve of MRI (0.995) was a little higher than that of US (0.987) and CT (0.982; P > 0.05).

Conclusion

US, CT and MRI have high diagnostic accuracies of clinically suspected acute appendicitis in children overall with no significant difference.

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