The Efficacy of Bronchoscopy versus Computerised Tomography in Initial Identification of Patients with Hemoptysis

The effects of bronchoscopy and chest CT on early evaluation of patients with hemoptysis are still controversial. PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library databases were systematically searched. Odds ratio (OR) was applied to assess the utility of bronchoscopy for hemoptysis etiology and site in comparison with CT in the various clinical processes. A total of 23 studies were included (N=4635). The results showed that bronchoscopy implied a lower overall diagnostic accuracy, especially in identifying the etiology of hemoptysis, compared with CT (OR= 0.34, 95% CI: [0.23, 0.51], OR=0.21, 95% CI: [0.14, 0.31], respectively). When the results of radiograph were normal, the effectiveness of bronchoscopy was significantly weaker than that of CT (OR=0.32, 95% CI: [0.22, 0.45]). In the cases of massive hemoptysis, bronchoscopy and CT had no statistical significance for identifying bleeding (OR=0.27, 95% CI: [0.02, 3.18]). The study suggested that bronchoscopy did not show superior diagnostic accuracy than CT for patients with hemoptysis at the first visit. Key Words: Hemoptysis, Bronchoscopy, CT, Meta-analysis.