Rapid maxillary expansion effects on the upper airway dimensions and function in growing patients: An umbrella review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: Because numerous published systematic reviews have assessed the effect of rapid maxillary expansion (RME) over upper airway dimensional changes, it is important to map and summarize their conclusions.In addition, the accepted methods used to evaluate the upper airway across the different systematic reviews will be outlined and areas of strengths and weaknesses on the topic identified.Methods: Systematic reviews in which RME treatment outcomes as related to upper airway dimensional changes or breathing function in children and adolescents were included in this umbrella systematic review.Studies that investigated upper airway changes using three-dimensional imaging (cone beam computed tomography, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging), acoustic rhinometry, rhinomanometry, and polysomnography correlated with RME effects were included.Studies on expansion using palatal anchorage with miniscrews and surgically assisted maxillary expansions were excluded, as well as studies including syndromic patients.Results: Sixty-six studies were found from the database searches.After managing duplicates, 33 studies were assessed based on the titles and abstracts, but only 16 reviews were considered for the next assessment phase (full text).From then, only 10 systematic reviews were finally included in this umbrella review.Conclusions: A significant amount of research has been published linking RME changes to increases in nasal respiratory capability, nasal volume, and linear transverse enlargement.However, methodologic inconsistencies and disagreements between the included studies (especially on the oropharyngeal dimensional changes after RME) lead to significant uncertainties about the consistency of the effect of RME changes, especially on the oropharynx region dimensions.It is not clear that the upper airway dimensional changes necessarily imply an improvement in actual breathing function.
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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 | 0.021 | 0.073 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.009 | 0.008 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.014 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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".