point-of-care ultrasonography for identification of skin and soft tissue abscess in adult and pediatric patients; a systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction: differentiating the soft tissue abscess from other types of skin and soft tissue infections (sstis) poses a particular challenge because they have similar physical evaluation findings, but each disease has a different course, outcome, and treatment. this meta-analysis aimed to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of point-of-care ultrasonography for diagnosis of soft tissue abscess in the emergency departments. methods: a comprehensive literature search of medline, scopus, web of science, embase, and google scholar, from inception to january 2023, was conducted to identify relevant studies investigating the diagnostic performance of point-of-care ultrasonography for identification of abscess. methodological quality of the included studies was assessed using a revised tool for the quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies (quadas-2). results: the pooled estimates of diagnostic parameters of ultrasonography for diagnosis of abscess were as follows: sensitivity, 0.93 (95% ci: 0.92–0.94); specificity, 0.87 (95% ci: 0.85–0.89), and the area under the summary receiver-operating characteristic (sroc), 0.95. the pooled sensitivity, specificity, and area under the sroc of studies in adult patients were 0.98 (95% ci: 0.92–1), 0.92 (95% ci: 0.86–0.95), and 0.99, respectively. the pooled sensitivity, specificity, and area under the sroc of studies in pediatric patients were 0.9 (95% ci: 0.87–0.92), 0.78 (95% ci: 0.73–0.82), and 0.91, respectively. conclusion: our meta-analysis demonstrated that the point-of-care ultrasonography has excellent diagnostic value for the abscess in the emergency department. furthermore, we found that the diagnostic performance of point-of-care ultrasonography for diagnosis of abscess was higher for adult cases than for pediatric patients.