Narrow band imaging as screening test for early detection of laryngeal cancer: a prospective study
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Updated: Mar 16, 2026
Minimally Invasive Murine Laryngoscopy for Close-Up Imaging of Laryngeal Motion During Breathing and Swallowing
Published on: December 1, 2023
A De Vito1, G Meccariello1, C Vicini1
1Head and Neck Department, Ear-Nose-Throat Unit, Morgagni-Pierantoni Hospital, Forlì, Italy.
Objectives:
To analyse the specificity and sensibility of narrow band imaging illumination technology in the early detection of laryngeal cancer in the patients' population without previous diagnosis of laryngeal cancer in a screening setting.
Design:
Unicentre, prospective study.
Setting:
One tertiary medical centre.
Participants:
A total of 158 patients completed all protocol steps.
Main Outcome Measures:
Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values of narrow band imaging (NBI) in detecting precancerous lesions and early laryngeal cancer.
Results:
The blind assessment of NBI patterns concurred in 90% of patients. In identifying laryngeal cancer and its precursor lesions, in-office NBI showed a high sensitivity of 97% (CI, 84.2%-99.9%), specificity of 92.5% (CI, 79.6%-98.4%), PPV of 91.4% (CI, 76.9%-98.2%), NPV of 97.4% (CI, 86.2%-99.9%) and accuracy of 94.5% but intra-operative NBI demonstrated a sensitivity of 97% (CI, 84.2%-99.9%), a slightly higher specificity of 95% (CI, 83.1%-99.4%), PPV of 94.1% (CI, 80.3%-993%), NPV of 97.4% (CI, 86.5%-99.9%) and accuracy of 95.9%. The comparative receiver operating characteristic curves confirmed a slightly higher performance for the intra-operative NBI evaluation without any statistical significance (P = 0.41).
Conclusions:
Our results confirm the high values of sensitivity and specificity of NBI system in detecting pre-neoplastic laryngeal lesions or early laryngeal cancer in a patients' population selected only by means of risk factors exposure and confirmed the potential role of NBI evaluation as in-office screening tool.
