Abstract
BACKGROUND: To evaluate the value of plasma D-dimer levels for the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). METHODS: The following databases were searched for relevant studies published from 1990 to 2018: Wanfang Data, SinoMed, VIP Chinese Science and Technology Periodicals Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Superstar Journals Database, Cochrane library, and PubMed. The studies were selected according to the diagnosis of HCC by plasma D-dimer levels. Quality assessment of the diagnostic accuracy of the studied items was conducted for rigorous quality evaluation of the studies that met the inclusion criteria. After extracting the relevant data, Stata 15.0 software was adopted for the analysis of the diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative likelihood ratios. A summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve was constructed to comprehensively evaluate the value of plasma D-dimer levels for the diagnosis of HCC. RESULTS: A total of 6 studies conducted in China with 475 cases in the patient groups and 727 in the control groups were included. The confidence level was expressed as the 95% confidence interval (CI). The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative likelihood ratios, and DOR of plasma D-dimer levels for the diagnosis of HCC were 0.75 (95% CI = 0.66-0.82), 0.93 (95% CI = 0.86-0.97), 11.4 (95% CI = 5.3-24.5), 0.27 (95% CI = 0.20-0.36), and 42 (95% CI = 19-93), respectively. The area under the SROC curve was 0.88 (95% CI = 0.85-0.91). CONCLUSIONS: Plasma D-dimer has high sensitivity and specificity, and is expected to be an important plasma marker for the clinical diagnosis of HCC. Due to the limited quality and quantity of the included studies, the above results should be further validated.