Diagnostic value of serum carbohydrate antigen 19-9 in pancreatic cancer: a meta-analysis

Pancreatic cancer is a highly malignant cancer with increasing incidence and mortality worldwide. Carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9) has been widely reported to play a role in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer patients. However, published data on this subject are inconclusive. There was no meta-analysis that has been previously performed to evaluate critically the diagnostic accuracy of CA19-9 for pancreatic cancer. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of CA19-9 in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. We conducted a comprehensive search to identify studies in which the pooled sensitivity, specificity, diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), and summary receiver operating curves (SROC) could be determined. A total of 11 studies that included 2,316 individuals who fulfilled all of the inclusion criteria were considered for analysis. The summary estimates for serum CA19-9 in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in these studies were pooled sensitivity 0.80 (95 % confidence interval [CI] 0.77–0.82), specificity 0.80 (95 % CI 0.77–0.82), and DOR 14.79 (95 % CI 8.55–25.59), and the area under the curve was 0.87. Our meta-analysis showed that serum CA19-9 plays important role in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.