Randomized double-blind trial comparing the cosmetic outcome of cutting diathermy <i>versus</i> scalpel for skin incisions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Controversy exists about whether cutting diathermy for skin incisions leads to a cosmetically inferior scar. Cosmetic outcomes were compared between skin incisions created with cutting diathermy versus scalpel. Wound infection rates and postoperative incisional pain were also compared. METHODS: This was a randomized double-blind trial comparing cutting diathermy and scalpel in patients undergoing bowel resection. Scar cosmesis was assessed at 6 months after surgery by a plastic surgeon and a research associate using the Vancouver Scar Scale (VSS) and the Patient and Observer Scar Assessment Scale (POSAS). Patients also used POSAS to self-evaluate their scars. Wound infections within 30 days were recorded, and incision pain scores were measured on the first 5 days after operation. RESULTS: A total of 66 patients were randomized to cutting diathermy (31) or scalpel (35). At 6 months, there was no significant difference between the diathermy and scalpel groups in mean(s.d.) VSS scores (4·9(2·6) versus 5·0(1·9); P = 0·837), mean POSAS total scores (19·2(8·0) versus 20·0(7·4); P = 0·684) or subjective POSAS total scores (20·2(12·1) versus 21·3(10·4); P = 0·725). Neither were there significant differences in wound infection rates between the groups (5 of 30 versus 5 of 32; P = 1·000). Pain scores on day 1 after operation were significantly lower in the diathermy group (mean 1·68 versus 3·13; P = 0·018), but were not significantly different on days 2-5. CONCLUSION: Cutting diathermy is a cosmetically acceptable technique for abdominal skin incisions. There is no increased risk of wound infection, and diathermy may convey benefit in terms of early postoperative wound pain. REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT01496404 ( http://www.clinicaltrials.gov).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".