The diagnostic value of confocal laser endomicroscopy for gastric cancer and precancerous lesions among Asian population: a system review and meta-analysis

Objective: The objective of this study is to evaluate the diagnostic value of confocal laser endomicroscopy (CLE) in detection of gastric cancer (GC), gastric intraepithelial metaplasia (GIM), and gastric intraepithelial neoplasia (GIN) lesions.

Method: PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and Wangfang databases were searched to include eligible articles about CLE in detection of gastric lesions. After study selection, quality assessment and data extraction conducted by two reviewers independently, meta-analysis was performed by Meta-Disc 1.4. The pooled sensitivity and specificity was calculated, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was constructed, and the area under ROC curve (AUC) was calculated.

Results: Twenty-three studies evaluating the diagnostic value of CLE were included. For the diagnosis of GC lesions, the pooled sensitivity, specificity, and AUC were 91% (88–94%), 99% (99–99%), and 0.9513, respectively. For the diagnosis of lesions, the pooled sensitivity, specificity, and AUC were 92% (90–94%), 97% (96–98%), and 0.9774, respectively. For the diagnosis of GIN lesions, the pooled sensitivity, specificity and AUC were 81% (75–85%), 98% (97–98%), and 0.9204, respectively.

Conclusions: CLE can provide an accurate diagnosis with high sensitivity and specificity for GC, GIM, and GIN lesions. The results should be confirmed by well-designed, multi-centered, randomized controlled, and double blinded trials with large samples.