To asses the diagnostic value of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in malignant pleural effusion by Meta-analysis.

We not only searched Best Evidence, Cochrane library, PubMed, CBM, CNKI , VIP, Wanfang Data et al but also checked online (www.google.cn; www.baidu.com) and traced literature to gather the relevant research literature on VEGF for the diagnosis of malignant pleural effusion from January 2000 to May 2016. Then we used Meta-Disc 1.4 and RevMan 5.3 software for data analysis to evaluate the diagnostic value of VEGF in malignant pleural effusion by calculating the pooled sensitivity, specificity, the likelihood ratio(LR), diagnostic odds ratios (DOR) and conducting summary receiver operating characteristic curve(SROC curve).

Totally 747 articles were searched and finally 10 were included with sample size of 893 cases, including 468 cases of malignant pleural effusion and 425 cases of benign pleural effusion. The summary estimates for VEGF in the diagnosis of MPE were: sensitivity 0.72(95% CI 0.67, 0.76), specificity0.80 (95% CI 0.75, 0.83), positive likelihood ratio 3.81(95% CI 2.40, 6.06), negative likelihood ratio 0.37(95% CI 0.28, 0.48), diagnostic odds ratio 12.79(95% CI 6.33, 25.84) and the SROC area under the curve(AUC) 0.8384.

VEGF in pleural effusion has potential diagnostic value with advanced sensitivity and specificity and it can be used as adjunct tool for non-invasive diagnosis of malignant pleural effusion.