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Page 4 of 13 Quartuccio et al. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2021;7:14 I http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2020.118

Figure 1. Flow diagram of literature search.

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The DR of F-FDG PET/CT for hematogenous metastases was calculated for per-patient and per-lesion
analyses and presented using forest plots.

Diagnostic accuracy (AC) was calculated only for the articles from which it was possible to extract the
number of TP, FN, FP, and TN cases on a per-patient and/or per-lesion basis. AC was presented using
summary receiver operating curve (SROC).

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Significant difference between accuracy of F-FDG PET/CT and other imaging modalities was assessed,
using a significance threshold of 0.05.

RESULTS
Literature search and eligibility assessment
The comprehensive computer literature search from PubMed/MEDLINE database revealed 836 articles
[Figure 1]. Reviewing titles and abstracts, 725 articles were excluded. In particular, 725 were not in the field
of interest of the present study or were non-original articles. Five further articles were excluded because the
full-text could not be obtained despite contacting the authors.

The full text of the remaining 106 studies was evaluated to assess the inclusion criteria. After checking the
full-text, 91 articles were excluded, since at least one of the inclusion criteria was not met. No additional
records were retrieved after crosschecking the references.

Ultimately, the literature search led to 15 studies suitable for the inclusion in the systematic review and
meta-analysis [19-31] .