The purpose of this study was to compare the diagnostic performance of sialography and salivary ultrasonography (US) for Sjögren's syndrome (SS) patients.
We searched Medline, Embase, and the Cochran library, and performed two meta-analyses on the diagnostic accuracy of sialography and salivary US in SS patients.
A total of six studies including 488 patients and 447 controls from two European and four Asian studies were available for the meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity and specificity of sialography were 80.0% (95% confidence interval [CI] 76.4-83.2) and 89.0% (85.8-91.8), respectively, and 77.4 (73.7-80.9) and 81.5 (77.6-85.0) for US, respectively. For sialography, the PLR, NLR, and DOR were 9.296 (4.200-20.57), 0.228 (0.170-0.305), and 46.51 (16.14-134.0), respectively, and for US were 4.631 (2.707-7.864), 0.302 (0.226-0.403), and 17.48 (10.03-30.45), respectively. The area under the curve (AUC) of sialography was 0.824, and the Q* index was 0.757, while the AUC of US was 0.864, and its Q* index was 0.794, indicating that the diagnostic accuracy of US is comparable with sialography in SS patients. A subgroup meta-analysis according to the diagnostic criteria did not change the overall diagnostic accuracy.
Our meta-analysis of published studies demonstrates that the diagnostic accuracy of salivary US is comparable with sialography in SS patients.