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SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE · MED

Diagnostic Accuracy of Transcranial Sonography of the Substantia Nigra in Parkinson's disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Sci Rep · 2016-02-16

DOI: 10.1038/srep20863PMID: 26878893

Open accessMeta-Analysis; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; research-article; Systematic Review; Journal ArticleOriginal source ↗

Research overview

The text below is the source article’s original abstract under a verified reuse license. cc by

A large number of articles have reported substantia nigra hyperechogenicity in Parkinson's disease (PD) and have assessed the diagnostic accuracy of transcranial sonography (TCS); however, the conclusions are discrepant. Consequently, this systematic review and meta-analysis aims to consolidate the available observational studies and provide a comprehensive evaluation of the clinical utility of TCS in PD. Totally, 31 studies containing 4,386 participants from 13 countries were included. A random effects model was utilized to pool the effect sizes. Meta-regression and sensitivity analysis were performed to explore potential heterogeneity. Overall diagnostic accuracy of TCS in differentiating PD from normal controls was quite high, with a pooled sensitivity of 0.83 (95% CI: 0.81-0.85) and a pooled specificity of 0.87 (95% CI: 0.85-0.88). The positive likelihood ratio, the negative likelihood ratio and diagnostic odds ratio were calculated 6.94 (95% CI: 5.09-9.48), 0.19 (95% CI: 0.16-0.23), and 42.89 (95% CI: 30.03-61.25) respectively. Our systematic review of the literature and meta-analysis suggest that TCS has high diagnostic accuracy in the diagnosis of PD when compared to healthy control.

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