Study designs of evaluations included in the review
Studies of at least 12 participants were eligible for inclusion.
Specific interventions included in the review
Studies evaluating the performance of FDG-PET for staging the extent of disease at initial diagnosis of SCLC, for diagnosing occult SCLC, or for re-staging post-treatment were eligible for inclusion.
Reference standard test against which the new test was compared
Studies were required to use a reference standard for the detection of malignancy to be included in the review, though the standard itself was not specified. The included studies used surgery, histology, computed tomography or clinical follow-up of patients, or combinations of these, as the reference standard.
Participants included in the review
Studies of patients with SCLC or paraneoplastic syndrome were eligible for inclusion. The patients in the included studies generally had newly diagnosed histologically confirmed SCLC or were post-treatment for SCLC. In one study patients had suspected paraneoplastic syndrome.
Outcomes assessed in the review
Inclusion criteria for the outcomes were not specified. The outcome measures used in the review were sensitivity and specificity.
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.