Comparison of CT and fiberoptic bronchoscopy in the evaluation of bronchial disease

Correlation of the Imaging Findings with Bronchoscopic Findings for the Detection of Endobronchial Lesions: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…After reviewing the titles and abstracts, 18 articles met the criteria and were candidates for full text analysis [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. The articles that were excluded in this first phase of selection were no relevant in the scope of this review.…”

“…From those selected, 8 were excluded from this study, three papers did not compare the imaging with the bronchoscopic findings, two papers did not use the detection of the lesion as the target point of the study, in one, there was no recording of the imaging findings, in one there was no clear display of the statistical analysis of the results and in another, the selection of the patients included a high risk of bias [27][28][29][30][31][32][33] (Table 2). As a result, 10 articles were finally selected and analyzed for our review study [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

“…All the patients were subjected to Fiberoptic Bronchoscopy (FOB) and imaging of the chest. The main techniques used for the imaging analysis of the chest were axial CT in seven studies [13,14,17,[19][20][21][22] and Virtual Bronchoscopy (VB) in three studies but the results were analyzed only in two of them [17,18,21]. Moreover, some other techniques of the imaging analysis were used, such as low-dose CT [16], super-high resolution CT (SHR-CT) [20], axial maximum intensity projection (MIP) images [15], coronal and sagittal multidetector CT (MDCT) [16], multiplanar reformatting (MPR) [22], volume rendering techniques (VRT) [22] and CT bronchography [14], each used once.…”

“…The first step in the diagnosis of a suspected lesion is the imaging of the chest. Chest CT scan is a valuable tool which has demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity rates [19]. Over the years, various advanced techniques have been developed aiming to a more detailed assessment of the lungs and chest, using 2-D and 3-D reconstruction algorithms [7].…”

“…The studies that were included in this review were prospective or retrospective studies concerning the imaging and bronchoscopic characteristics of endobronchial lesions [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. The individuals that were included in the studies were patients of any age with an endobronchial lesion which could be malignant, benign or undiagnosed.…”