Overlapping Compared With End-to-End Repair of Complete Third-Degree or Fourth-Degree Obstetric Tears
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Traditional obstetric practice for repair of third-degree or fourth-degree tears of the external anal sphincter has been using an end-to-end technique. Studies reporting that end-to-end repair was associated with higher rates of external anal sphincter defects and associated anal incontinence symptoms led to increased preference by clinicians for performing overlapping repair of obstetric anal sphincter lacerations. This study reports the results of a 3-year follow-up of a randomized controlled trial conducted in women who underwent primary repair of a complete third-degree or fourth-degree obstetric tear with either the overlapping technique or the end-to-end procedure. Participants were primiparous women enrolled at a single tertiary-care academic center between 2001 and 2007. Eligible women were randomized to receive either end-to-end (n = 86) or overlapping (n = 88) external anal sphincter repair. At a follow-up of 1, 2, and 3 years, questionnaires were mailed to participants to determine rates of flatal and fecal incontinence. At 1 year, rates of flatal and fecal incontinence were lower in women who underwent an end-to-end repair than in those who had an overlapping repair. The flatal incontinence rate was 31% for end-to-end repair and 56% for overlapping repair (difference: 25%, with a 95% confidence interval of 6%–43%; P = 0.012). The fecal incontinence rate for end-to-end repair was 7% and for overlapping repair was 16% (difference: 9%, with a 95% confidence interval of −4% to 21%; P = 0.17). By the end of year 2, the difference between the 2 methods of surgical repair had largely disappeared. These findings indicate that at 1-year follow-up, end-to-end repair of complete third-degree or fourth-degree obstetric anal sphincter tears is less likely than overlapping repair to result in anal incontinence. The lower rate of anal incontinence with end-to-end repair is not sustained at 2 years, suggesting no long-term benefit of either technique over the other.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".