Morphine-augmented hepatobiliary scintigraphy: a meta-analysis.

The aim of this study was to compare the sensitivity and specificity of morphine-augmented hepatobiliary scintigraphy (MA-HBS) with that of conventional hepatobiliary scintigraphy (C-HBS) for acute cholecystitis. The results of most MA-HBS studies cannot be compared with C-HBS estimates, since articles describing C-HBS often include non-candidates for MA-HBS. However, using meta-analytic techniques to combine data from eligible studies (4 for C-HBS and 5 for MA-HBS), the specificity of MA-HBS (0.84; 95% CI = 0.75-0.94) was significantly greater (P = 0.008) than that of C-HBS (0.68; 95% CI = 0.61-0.75); there were no differences in sensitivity (MA-HBS; 0.96, 95% CI = 0.92-0.99; C-HBS: 0.97, 95% CI = 0.97-0.99).