ObjectiveTo systematically review the clinical significance of Raman spectroscopy (RS) in the auxiliary diagnosis of colon cancer (CC). MethodsPubMed, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library, CNKI, VIP and WanFang Data databases were electronically searched to collect diagnostic tests related to RS in the auxiliary diagnosis of CC from inception to October 1st, 2021. Two reviewers independently screened the literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of the included studies. Meta-analysis was then performed using Stata 12.0 and Meta-Disc 1.4 software. ResultsA total of 21 studies involving 1 419 patients were included. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and positive posttest probability (PPP) for CC screening applying RS were 0.94 (95%CI 0.93 to 0.95), 0.91 (95%CI 0.90 to 0.92), 157.50 (95%CI 74.44 to 333.21), 10.40 (95%CI 6.62 to 16.33), 0.08 (95%CI 0.05 to 0.12) and 77%, respectively. The area under the curve (AUC) of summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve was 0.98 (95%CI 0.96 to 0.99). ConclusionCurrent evidence shows that RS is a potentially useful tool for CC screening. Due to the limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high-quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusion.
