Objective To assess the potential role of deoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (FDG-PET/CT) in the diagnosis, staging and prognosis of pancreatic cancer using Meta-analysis.

Methods Computer-based retrieval was conducted on PubMed, Ovid, Cochrane Library, CNKI and VIP to search reports about diagnosis, staging and prognosis of pancreatic cancer, collected data and evaluated the quality based QUASAD. All calculations were performed by Meta-Disc software and Stata software.

Results Studies related to diagnosis, staging and prognosis: 42 articles in total were finally included after deducting repeats. The pooled sensitively of FDG-PET/CT in diagnosis pancreatic cancer, evaluating lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis were 0.93 (95%CI: 0.92-0.94), 0.65 (95%CI: 0.56-0.74) and 0.82 (95%CI: 0.71-0.90), respectively; and the corresponding specificity was 0.73 (95%CI: 0.70-0.76), 0.86 (95%CI: 0.79-0.91) and 0.95 (95%CI: 0.91-0.98), respectively. In prognosis analysis, significant difference of overall survival (HR_pooled=1.96, 95%CI: 1.52-2.52) and progress free survival (HR_pooled=2.26, 95%CI: 1.33-3.83) were both observed between high and low standardized uptake value groups.

Conclusion FDG-PET/CT can be used as a valuable tool for diagnosis and prediction of overall survival for pancreatic cancer; however, the effect in the staging of pancreatic cancer was still indeterminate and to be further researched.