Meta-analysis of diagnostic value of serum Carbohydrate antigen 199 in pancreatic cancer.

Carbohydrate antigen 199 (CA199) has been used as a new promising serum biomarker for the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. But its utility was full of controversies. This study sought to determine the diagnosis value of serum CA199 in pancreatic cancer through enrolling all the related eligible studies.We searched PubMed, Medline, Embase, ISI databases to collect articles in English that evaluated the diagnostic value of CA199 in patients with pancreatic cancer. Two reviewers independently assessed the methodological quality of each study using the quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies tool. The data were analyzed using Meta-Disc (Version 1.4) and Stata (Version 12.0) software. We estimated the sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC). A total of 11 studies involving 2,316 individuals were included.The pooled sensitivity and specificity for CA199 in diagnosing pancreatic cancer were 0.80 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.77-0.82) and 0.80 (95% CI: 0.77-0.82), respectively. The DOR was 14.79 (95% CI: 8.55-25.59) and the area under the SROC curve was 0.87.The current analyses indicated that CA199 is a valuable marker in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.