Diagnostic value of Thallium-201 scintigraphy in differentiating malignant bone tumors from benign bone lesions

Diagnostic accuracy of functional imaging modalities for chondrosarcoma: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…We assessed methodological qualities of included studies using the QUADAS-2 tool [24] (Table 2). In the participant selection domain, six studies were considered to be at low risk of bias [5,10,13,[25], [26], [27]. There was insufficient reporting to determine whether the participants were randomly or consecutively enrolled in seven studies [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34].…”

“…The highest level of risk of bias was observed in the index test domain. Four studies [10,15,25,35] set sensitivity and specificity maximising threshold values for diagnosis with the knowledge of reference test results. In six studies [13,27,28,31,32,36], the index test was performed before the histological assessment hence we inferred that they did not have the knowledge of the reference standard.…”

“…Nevertheless, it is the accepted general standard in nuclear medicine. In the reference standard domain, it was unclear whether assessors of the reference standard were blinded to the index test results in 11 studies [5,10,13,15,25,28,[30], [31], [32],36]. We considered a follow-up for longer than 12 months for benign tumours was sufficient to correctly identify them.…”

“…We considered a follow-up for longer than 12 months for benign tumours was sufficient to correctly identify them. Hence, six studies [10,15,29,30,32,33] that used both histopathological assessment and follow-up as reference standards were not considered to pose a high risk of bias.…”

“…Functional imaging is a medical imaging technique to measure or detect metabolic processes through the use of radiotracers [9]. It offers additional and specific metabolic and biological information [10]. There is a growing interest in the use of functional scans to diagnose, guide biopsy and assess therapeutic response after treatment for cartilaginous tumours [6,[10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17].…”