Impact of early diagnosis of carotid artery stenosis by carotid ultrasound: A protocol of systematic review and meta-analysis

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of carotid ultrasound (CU) for early diagnosis of carotid artery stenosis (CAS). Literatures will be sought from the following electronic databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, PSYCINFO, Web of Science, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure. The search will cover from the start of indexing to the present without any limitations of language and publication status. All study quality will be assessed by Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies tool, and data will be analyzed by RevMan V.5.3 software and Stata V.12.0 software. This study will investigate the impact of CU for early diagnosis of CAS through sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, and diagnostic odds ratio. The findings of this study may provide helpful evidence for the impact of CU for early diagnosis of CAS. PROSPERO CRD42019153904.