Point-of-care testing in the diagnosis of gastrointestinal cancers: Current technology and future directions

Table 1 Full search strategy used is described

MEDLINE search strategy

1. [(point of care or near patient or poc or rapid or bedside) adj3 (test* or analys* or immunoassay* or technique* or assay* or diagnos* or technology* or system?)].mp

2. Point-of-Care Systems/

3. 1 or 2

4. exp Gastrointestinal Neoplasms/

5. [(oesohag* or esophag* or gast* or stomach* or duoden* or ile* or jeun* or caec* or append* or cec* or colo* or rect* or anal or anus or intestin*) adj2 (cancer? or carcinoma? or malignancy or malignant or neoplasm?)].mp

6. 4 or 5

7. 3 and 6

EMBASE search strategy

1. [(point of care or point-of-care or near patient or poc or rapid or bedside) adj3 (test* or analys* or immunoassay* or technique* or assay* or diagnos* or technology* or system?)].mp

2. "point of care testing"/

3. 1 or 2

4. [(oesohag* or esophag* or gast* or stomach* or duoden* or ile* or jeun* or caec* or append* or cec* or colo* or rect* or anal or anus or intestin*) adj2 (cancer? or carcinoma? or malignancy or malignant or neoplasm?)].mp

5. digestive system cancer/or exp esophagus cancer/or exp intestine cancer/or exp stomach cancer/

6. 4 or 5

7. 3 and 6

Table 2 Described methods of testing for gastrointestinal cancer and accuracy of commercially available tests based on recent evidence (point-of-care)

Technology	Commercial available POC device	POC sensitivity	POC specificity	Level of evidence	Papers retrieved in primary search (n)
Occult blood	Yes	79%[25]	94%[25]	1	10[20,22,34,66-72]
Fecal proteins	Yes	83%[33] (calprotectin)	84%[33] (calprotectin)	2	3[34,73,74]
Volatile organic compounds	No				0
Pyruvate kinase isoenzyme type M2	Yes	80.3%[48]	95.2%[48]	1	1[72]
Tumour markers	No				6[47,49,68,75-77]
DNA mutation analysis	No				4[56,76,78,79]
Multitarget stool DNA test	No				0

POC: Point-of-care.