Objective To evaluate the diagnostic value of all diagnostic tests detecting the ethambutol resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Methods PubMed, EMbase, Chinese Biomedical Database (CBM), Chinese Scientific Journals Full-Text Database (CSJD), and Chinese Journal Full-text Database (CJFD) were searched, and QUADAS items were used to evaluate the quality of included studies. Meta-disc software was used to handle data from included studies. Such index as sensitivity, specificity, and SROC were applied to assess the diagnostic value of individual diagnostic test. Results Nine studies were included. The results of meta-analyses showed that compared with proportion method, the summary sensitivity, summary specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, and SROC area under curve of a nitrate reductase assay were 92%, 99%, 30.50, 0.13, and 0.975 2, respectively, while compared with BACTEC 460 TB, the above mentioned indexes of BACTEC MGIT 960 System were 92%, 99%, 6.27, 0.11, and 0.9, respectively. Bacteriophage biological amplification method revealed relative good analysis effectiveness on MB/BacT. Conclusion According to the results, it is recommended that nitrate reductase assay can replace proportion method as screening test of ethambutol resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and BACTEC MGIT 960 System can replace BACTEC 460 as final diagnostic test of ethambutol resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
