Diagnostic accuracy of point-of-care tests for hepatitis C virus infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Point-of-care tests provide a plausible diagnostic strategy for hepatitis C infection in economically impoverished areas. However, their utility depends upon the overall performance of individual tests.

Methods

A literature search was conducted using the metasearch engine Mettā, a query interface for retrieving articles from five leading medical databases. Studies were included if they employed point-of-care tests to detect antibodies of hepatitis C virus and compared the results with reference tests. Two reviewers performed a quality assessment of the studies and extracted data for estimating test accuracy.

Findings

Thirty studies that had evaluated 30 tests fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The overall pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood-

SUBMITTER: Khuroo MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4376712 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature