Impact of Rectus Diastasis Repair on Abdominal Strength and Function: A Systematic Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Rectus diastasis plication performed during abdominoplasty aims to narrow the widened linea alba and return the rectus muscle bellies to their anatomic position. It is unclear whether plication improves abdominal strength and function. This systematic review summarizes the effect of rectus plication on abdominal strength, function, and postoperative complications. A comprehensive search of CINAHL, Embase, Medline and Web of Science was performed. Screening and data extraction were performed in duplicate. Data were extracted from the included articles, and outcomes were analyzed categorically. A total of 497 patients from seven articles were included. Mean age was 44.5 years (range 20.5-72) and 94.4% were female. Three articles reported abdominal strength measurements, with two showing significant improvement. Four articles used the SF-36 survey, all demonstrating improvement in physical function subscale postoperatively. An additional six instruments were used to assess functional outcomes, of which four demonstrated significant improvement. The overall complication rate was 17.0%. Rectus plication is commonly performed during abdominoplasty to improve abdominal form and function. While the literature to date is encouraging with respect to functional outcomes, improvements in abdominal strength are less consistent. Heterogeneity in patient population, outcome measures, and comparison groups limit the strength of our conclusions. Future research should include a large comparative study as well as a protocol for standardizing outcomes in this population.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.020 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 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 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".