High-risk symptoms and quantitative faecal immunochemical test accuracy: Systematic review and meta-analysis

The quantitative faecal immunochemical test for haemoglobin (FIT) has been revealed to be highly accurate for colorectal cancer (CRC) detection not only in a screening setting, but also in the assessment of patients presenting lower bowel symptoms. Therefore, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has recommended the adoption of FIT in primary care to guide referral for suspected CRC in low-risk symptomatic patients using a 10 µg Hb/g faeces threshold. Nevertheless, it is unknown whether FIT´s accuracy remains stable throughout the broad spectrum of possible symptoms.

To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess FIT accuracy for CRC detection in different clinical settings.

A systematic literature search was performed using MEDLINE and EMBASE databases from inception to May 2018 to conduct a meta-analysis of prospective studies including symptomatic patients that evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of quantitative FIT for CRC detection. Studies were classified on the basis of brand, threshold of faecal haemoglobin concentration for a positive test result, percentage of reported symptoms (solely symptomatic, mixed cohorts) and CRC prevalence (< 2.5%, ≥ 2.5%) to limit heterogeneity and perform subgroup analysis to assess the influence of clinical spectrum on FIT´s accuracy to detect CRC.

Fifteen cohorts including 13073 patients (CRC prevalence 0.4% to 16.8%) were identified. Pooled estimates of sensitivity for studies using OC-Sensor at 10 µg Hb/g faeces threshold (n = 10400) was 89.6% [95% confidence interval (CI): 82.7% to 94.0%). However, pooled estimates of sensitivity for studies formed solely by symptomatic patients (n = 4035) and mixed cohorts (n = 6365) were 94.1% (95%CI: 90.0% to 96.6%) and 85.5% (95%CI: 76.5% to 91.4%) respectively (P < 0.01), while there were no statistically significant differences between pooled sensitivity of studies with CRC prevalence < 2.5% (84.9%, 95%CI: 73.4% to 92.0%) and ≥ 2.5% (91.7%, 95%CI: 83.3% to 96.1%) (P = 0.25). At the same threshold, OC-Sensor^® sensitivity to rule out any significant colonic lesion was 78.6% (95%CI: 75.6% to 81.4%). We found substantial heterogeneity especially when assessing specificity.

The results of this meta-analysis confirm that, regardless of CRC prevalence, quantitative FIT is highly sensitive for CRC detection. However, FIT ability to rule out CRC is higher in studies solely including symptomatic patients.