  Objective: To systematically evaluate the value of endocytoscopy (ECS) in the
diagnosis of early esophageal cancer (EC). Methods: Pubmed, Ovid and EMbase
databases were searched to collect diagnostic tests of ECS assisted diagnosis
of early EC. The retrieval time was from the establishment of the database to
August 2022. Review manager 5.4, Stata 16.0 and Meta-Disc 1.4 were used for
meta-analysis after two researchers independently screened literature,
extracted data and evaluated the bias risk of included studies. Results: A
total of 7 studies were included, including 520 lesions. Meta-analysis results
showed that the combined sensitivity(SE), specificity(SP), positive likelihood
ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and
positive posterior probability (PPP) of ECS screening for early EC were
0.95[95%CI: 0.84, 0.98], 0.92 [95%CI: 0.83, 0.96], 11.8 [95%CI: 5.3, 26.1],
0.06 [95%CI: 0.02, 0.18], 203 [95%CI: 50, 816], and 75%, respectively. The area
(AUC) under the receiver Operating Characteristic curve (SROC) was 0.98[95%CI:
0.96, 0.99]. Conclusions: Current evidence suggests that ECS can be used as an
effective screening tool for early EC. Due to the limited number and quality of
included studies, it is imperative to conduct more high-quality studies to
verify the above conclusions.
