Fig 1.
Flow chart illustrating the systematic literature search and study selection process.
Table 1.
Summary of eligible studies.
Table 2.
Quality assessment of eligible studies by QUADAS-2.
Table 3.
Diagnostic characteristics reported by eligible studies.
Table 4.
Overall diagnostic accuracy of blood and pleural fluid NT-proBNP for heart failure.
Fig 2.
Forest plot of the estimates of sensitivity and specificity for pleural fluid N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide in the diagnosis of heart failure.
Fig 3.
Summary receiver operating characteristic curves for overall diagnostic accuracy of pleural fluid N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide.
Each study in the meta-analysis is represented by a solid circle.
Fig 4.
Funnel plot for the assessment of publication bias.