Enrico Martin

117 Diagnostic accuracy of non-invasive tests and a follow-up of less than 6 months. Risk of bias regarding flow and timing was only present if studies changed their reference standard during study period. Applicability concerns were raised whenever a study was at high risk of bias. Figure 1 Flowchart Depicting Study Selection Records identified through database searching PubMed (n = 7368) Embase (n = 2178) Additional records identified through additional sources (n = 1) Records after duplicates removed (n = 8463) Records screened on title and abstract (n = 8463) Records excluded (n = 8363) Full text articles assessed for eligibility (n = 100) Full-text articles excluded, with reasons (n = 57) - Conference abstract (24) - No comparison of benign and malignant (18) - Irrelevant index test (9) - No full text available (3) - Case report (2) - Review (1) Articles included for qualitative synthesis (n = 43) Screening Included Eligibility Identification Articles included for quantitative synthesis (n = 35) Articles excluded from meta-analyses (n = 8) - Reported characteristics described in <3 studies (7) - Reported overlapping data only (1) Figure 1 Flowchart depicting study selection 6