Test performance of optical coherence tomography angiography in detecting retinal diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

ObjectiveTo investigate the diagnostic accuracy of optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) in detecting vascular characteristics of chorio-retinal disease.MethodsEvidence acquisition: We searched Web of Science, Scopus, and Medline by the citation of references and complemented these electronic searches by checking the list of references of included and review articles. Screening, selection, assessment, and extraction was performed in parallel by two authors.ResultsEvidence synthesis: Systematic review and exploratory meta-analysis. The ten studies that contributed to the meta-analysis enrolled 440 eyes and allowed constructing ten two-by-two tables. The tables reported on detection of choroidal neovascularization (CNV) in eyes suffering from either age-related macular degeneration (4), central serous chorioretinopathy (2), myopia (2), foveomacular vitelliform dystrophy (1), or a mixed cohort suffering from multiple retinal diseases (1). Of the ten studies, six used a cohort and four a case–control design. We found a pooled sensitivity of 0.90 (95% confidence intervals (CIs): 0.82–0.95) and a pooled specificity of 0.97 (95% CI: 0.89–0.99). Corresponding positive and negative likelihood ratios were 32.3 (95% CI: 7.4–141.6) and 0.10 (95% CI: 0.06–0.20), respectively. No pooling was possible for retinal vascular parameters of diabetic retinopathy, polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy, or detection of CNV activity.ConclusionsThe results of highly biased and heterogeneous studies assessing the diagnostic performance of OCTA highlight the need for further analyses of methodologically sound and sufficiently sized clinical evaluations.