To evaluate the predictive value of passive leg raising test in mechanical ventilation weaning.

Clinical trials in the field of using passive leg raising test in mechanical ventilation weaning were retrieved from China national knowledge internet (CNKI), CQVIP, Baidu Scholar, chictr.org.cn, PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, clinicaltrials.gov until February 11, 2018. Data were independently extracted by two reviewers. Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2 (QUADAS-2) were used to evaluate the quality of these studies, and Review Manager 5.3.5 and Meta-disc were used to conduct the analysis.

Three studies were included in the analysis, one of which was in Chinese and the other two were in English. Moreover, these studies were assessed as moderate to high quality studies. There were 145 patients altogether and 228 PLR tests and spontaneous breath trials (SBTs) were conducted. There were 123 positive PLR tests and 87 with successful SBTs. While there were 105 negative PLR tests and 18 with successful SBTs. The predictive accurate rate of PLR in mechanical ventilation weaning was 76.3%. The pooled sensitivity and specificity with positive PLR test to predict a successful SBT were 0.83 (95% CI: 0.74-0.90) and 0.71 (95% CI: 0.62-0.79), respectively; Youden index was 0.54 and the area under summary receiver operating characteristic curve (SROC) was 0.82±0.04.

PLR test can be used to predict mechanical ventilation weaning.