The diagnostic accuracy of touch imprint cytology for sentinel lymph node metastases of breast cancer: An up-to-date meta-analysis of 4,073 patients

This meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of touch imprint cytology (TIC) for sentinel lymph node (SLN) metastases of patients with clinical node-negative early breast cancer. The PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and the Cochrane Library databases were meticulously searched to retrieve literature published from January 2005 to September 2022 by two independent reviewers. The meta-analysis was performed using STATA16.0, Meta-Disc 1.4, and RevMan 5.4.9. According to the inclusion criteria, 4,073 patients from 13 studies were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity and specificity of TIC for detecting SLN metastases were 0.77 (95% CI 0.66–0.85) and 0.99 (95% CI 0.97–1.00), respectively. The pooled positive likelihood ratio and negative likelihood ratio were 76.15 (95% CI 29.16–198.84) and 0.23 (95% CI 0.15–0.36), respectively. The pooled diagnostic odds ratio was 326.82 (95% CI 132.76–804.56) and the area under the sROC curve was 0.97 (95% CI 0.95–0.98), respectively. This meta-analysis revealed that TIC with high sensitivity and specificity is a feasibility and accuracy diagnosis technique for intraoperative detection of SLN metastases in breast cancer.