The presence or absence of lymph node metastasis plays a decisive role in the treatment and prognosis of cervical cancer. However, it is not clinically assessable and the screening for lymph node metastasis remains controversial. Scholars at the University of Birmingham Maternity Hospital, UK, searched a large body of relevant literature and used a meta-analysis with random effects to assess the accuracy of anterior lymph node biopsy, positron emission tomography, MRI and CT for lymph node metastasis. A meta-regression analysis was also used to analyze the effect of the quality of this study on diagnostic accuracy and the heterogeneity of information from different sources. The positive likelihood ratios were 40.8 for lymph node biopsy, 15.3 for positron emission tomography, 6.4 for MRI, and 4.3 for CT, and the negative likelihood ratios were 0.18 for lymph node biopsy, 0.27 for positron emission tomography, 0.5 for MRI, and 0.58 for CT. If a positive sentinel lymph node biopsy is performed, the chance of lymph node metastasis rises to 94%, while a positive positron emission tomography has an 85% chance of lymph node metastasis. This suggests that sentinel lymph node biopsy has the highest accuracy in determining whether lymph nodes in early cervical cancer have metastasized.