Nine studies that evaluated CAM-ICU (969 patients, range 22 to 181) and four that evaluated ICDSC (397 patients, range 59 to 126) were included in the review. All studies scored 13 or 14 (out of 14) on QUADAS; studies that scored 13 failed to report avoiding progression bias.
CAM-ICU: Pooled sensitivity was 80.0% (95% CI 77.1% to 82.6%), specificity was 95.9% (95% CI 94.8% to 96.8%) and diagnostic odds ratio was 103.2 (95% CI 39.6 to 268.8). The area under the curve was 0.97.
ICDSC: Pooled sensitivity was 74% (95% CI 65.3% to 81.5%), specificity was 81.9% (95% CI 76.7% to 86.4%) and the diagnostic odds ratio was 21.5 (95% CI 8.51 to 54.4). The area under the curve was 0.89.
Results for subgroup analyses were reported. Heterogeneity was substantial across most of the analyses.