An overview of meta-analyses of diagnostic tests in infectious diseases.

This review summarizes meta-analyses evaluating the accuracy of diagnostic tests for infectious diseases. Systematic searches identified 55 meta-analyses that satisfied inclusion criteria of reporting diagnostic accuracy of an index test compared with a reference test. All reviews were assessed for methods and reporting. The overall assessment underlined problems in several key steps: reporting detailed information from primary studies about the study design and patient characteristics, reference and index tests characteristics, and review methods. The execution and reporting of systematic reviews of diagnostic tests need to be improved.