Systemic corticosteroid monotherapy for clinically diagnosed acute rhinosinusitis: a randomized controlled trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Patients with acute rhinosinusitis are frequently encountered in primary care. Although corticosteroids are being increasingly used for symptom control, evidence supporting their use is inconclusive. We conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine the effectiveness of systemic corticosteroid monotherapy for clinically diagnosed, uncomplicated acute rhinosinusitis. METHODS: We conducted a block-randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial at 54 primary care practices (68 family physicians) in the Netherlands between Dec. 30, 2008, and Apr. 28, 2011. Adult patients with clinically diagnosed acute rhinosinusitis were randomly assigned to receive either prednisolone 30 mg/d or placebo for 7 days and asked to complete a symptom diary for 14 days. The primary outcome measure was the proportion of patients with resolution of facial pain or pressure on day 7. RESULTS: Of the 185 patients included in the trial (93 in the treatment group, 92 in the placebo group), 2 withdrew from the study and 9 were excluded from the primary analysis because of incomplete symptom reporting. The remaining 174 patients (88 in the treatment group, 86 in the placebo group) were included in the intention-to-treat analysis. The proportions of patients with resolution of facial pain or pressure on day 7 were 62.5% (55/88) in the prednisolone group and 55.8% (48/86) in the placebo group (absolute risk difference 6.7%, 95% confidence interval -7.9% to 21.2%). The groups were similar with regard to the decrease over time in the proportion of patients with total symptoms (combined symptoms of runny nose, postnasal discharge, nasal congestion, cough and facial pain) and health-related quality of life. Adverse events were mild and did not differ significantly between the groups. INTERPRETATION: Systemic corticosteroid monotherapy had no clinically relevant beneficial effects among patients with clinically diagnosed acute rhinosinusitis. Netherlands Trial Register registration no. 1295 (www.trialregister.nl/trialreg/index.asp).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".