Comparison of sputum induction and bronchoscopy in diagnosis of sputum smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis: a systemic review and meta-analysis

• Main Authors: Wen Luo, Yihua Lin, Zhibin Li, Wanyu Wang, Yonghong Shi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2020-05-01
• Series: BMC Pulmonary Medicine
• Subjects: Tuberculosis; Induced sputum; Bronchoscopy; Meta-analysis; Diagnosis
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12890-020-01192-w

Abstract Background Pulmonary tuberculosis is one of the most common infectious diseases worldwide. Patients with suspected pulmonary tuberculosis with negative smear are recommended to undergo further tests including sputum induction and bronchoscopy. Our study is aimed to compare sputum induction and bronchoscopic specimens in the diagnosis of sputum smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis. Method PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Embase were searched for eligible studies. The pooled sensitivities (SEN), specificities (SPE), positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were constructed, and the areas under the curves (AUCs) were calculated. Results Five studies with a total number of 586 cases were included. For mycobacterial culture, the SEN and SPE of sputum induction were 0.72(95% CI, 0.66–0.77) and 1.00(95%CI, 0.99–1.000) respectively, whereas the SEN and SPE of bronchoscopy were 0.70(95%CI, 0.64–0.75) and 1.00(95%CI, 0.99–1.00) respectively. Sputum induction had a similar AUC (0.9564, SE = 0.0749) with bronchoscopy (0.8618, SE = 0.1652) (P = 0.602). For specimen of acid-fast bacilli smear, the SEN and SPE of sputum induction were 0.35(95% CI, 0.29–0.42) and 0.99(95% CI, 0.96–1.00) respectively, whereas the SEN and SPE of bronchoscopy were 0.38(95% CI, 0.32–0.45) and 0.99(95% CI, 0.96–1.00) respectively. There is no statistically significant difference in the AUC for sputum induction (0.6016) compared with bronchoscopy (0.8163) (P = 0.792). Conclusions For the diagnosis of sputum smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis, the diagnosis yield of sputum induction and bronchoscopy is similar.