Fig 1.
Flow chart for literature search.
Table 1.
Overview of definitions used for complications and anastomotic leakage in the selected studies.
Abreviations; postoperative day (POD), anastomotic leak (AL), systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), computed tomography scan (CT), urinary tract infection (UTI).
Table 2.
Characteristics of the studies included for pooled-analysis.
Abbreviations: months (mo), minimally invasive surgery (MIS).
Table 3.
The QUADAS tool for classification of accuracy of the studies selected from literature, according to number of studies in each response category.
Table 4.
Median CRP levels and interquartile ranges (IQR) for each postoperative day in the included studies for patients with major complications versus patients with an uncomplicated course or minor complication.
NA = Not Available
Fig 2.
Receiver Operator Characteristics (ROC) curve for CRP levels on postoperative day (POD) 3,4 and 5.
Table 5.
Receiver Operator Characteristics (ROC) curve analysis for pooled data with area under the curve (AUC), positive predictive values(PPV) and negative predictive values (NPV) for each postoperative day (POD).
Positive and negative likelihood ratios (LR+ and LR-) were calculated to assess the difference in odds of complications pre- and post CRP measurement.
Fig 3.
Prediction for the probability of major complications as a function of measured CRP levels on postoperative day three, with 95% confidence interval.
Depicts probability of complications for individual CRP measurements.
Table 6.
Probability of major complications for different CRP levels, with the probability of the upper cut-off of 215 mg/L depicted.