Indocyanine green fluorescence for parathyroid gland identification and function prediction: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Background To evaluate the diagnostic accuracies of indocyanine green (ICG) fluorescence for identifying parathyroid glands during surgery and predicting the postoperative function. Methods From six databases, 21 studies were finally included in the study. True-positive, true-negative, false-positive, and false-negative data were extracted for the analysis. The quality of each study was analyzed using the QUADAS-2 tool. Results The sensitivity of ICG-based parathyroid gland identification was 0.9380 (95% CI [0.9003, 0.9621]). The diagnostic odds ratio for ICG-based prediction of parathyroid gland function was 54.5652 [13.2059, 225.4570]. The area under the summary receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.909. Fluorescence intensity-based prediction presented higher diagnostic accuracy than that of score-based prediction. The incidence of postoperative hypoparathyroidism was higher in the group with a zero ICG score compared to the high scored group. Conclusions Identification of parathyroid gland and prediction of postoperative function using ICG are valuable to patients undergoing thyroidectomy or parathyroidectomy.