Study designs of evaluations included in the review
The inclusion criteria were not clearly reported with respect to study design.
Specific interventions included in the review
PET imaging compared with alternatives such as clinical examination and mammography.
Reference standard test against which the new test was compared
The reference standard used to identify cases was not clearly reported, but it appears to have been surgical biopsy, fine-needle aspiration, and histopathology.
Participants included in the review
Patients undergoing PET for defining primary disease or axillary node involvement, or for detecting distant metastases. All the patients in the included studies had suspected or biopsy-proven breast cancer.
Outcomes assessed in the review
The outcomes computed from the primary studies included the sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of PET.
How were decisions on the relevance of primary studies made?
The authors did not state how the papers were selected for the review, or how many reviewers performed the selection.