The review addressed a clear question and inclusion criteria were defined in terms of index test, reference standard and target condition; details were lacking for population and outcomes. The literature search involved only two databases (one of which was more appropriate for intervention reviews), was restricted to published studies and had an end date of 2009 (month not specified), which was at least 18 months before the review was published. Studies published more recently than 2009 would not have been identified and there was a possibility of publication bias. Details on the review process were not reported and so it was not possible to determine whether appropriate steps were taken to minimise bias and errors. No formal quality assessment was performed and so the risk of bias in the included studies was unclear. No details other than results were reported for the included studies, so it was not possible to determine the generalisability of the review findings. Details on methods used to pool data were lacking; it appeared that simple summing of 2x2 tables was used and there was a risk of biased summary estimates with this method. No measures of the variability of the summary estimates and heterogeneity across studies were reported, which made if difficult to interpret the summary estimates.
This review suffered from several limitations and so the authors' conclusions are unlikely to be reliable.