A Meta-Analysis about the Screening Role of Pulse Oximetry for Congenital Heart Disease.

Objective: The opinions about the application of pulse oximetry in diagnosis of congenital heart disease (CHD) were debatable. We performed this meta-analysis to confirm the diagnostic role of pulse oximetry screening for CHD.

Methods: Relevant articles were searched in the databases of Pubmed, Embase, Google Scholar, and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) up to April 2017. Data was processed in the MetaDiSc 1.4 software. Pooled sensitivity and specificity with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were calculated to explain the diagnostic role of pulse oximetry screening for CHD. ⩾50% or < 0.05 indicated significant heterogeneity. Area under curve (AUC) of summary receiver operating characteristics (SROC) was calculated to assess its diagnostic accuracy. The robustness of overall results was evaluated by sensitivity analysis. Publication bias was evaluated by Deek's funnel plot.

Results: 22 eligible articles were selected. Pooled sensitivity and specificity were 0.69 (0.67-0.72) and 0.99 (0.99-0.99), respectively. The corresponding AUC was 0.9407, suggesting high diagnostic accuracy of pulse oximetry screening for CHD. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated that the pooled results were robust. Deek's funnel plot seemed to be symmetrical.

Conclusions: Pulse oximetry screening could be used to diagnose CHD. It shows high diagnosis specificity and accuracy.