Efficacy of Steroid-Impregnated Spacers After Endoscopic Sinus Surgery in Chronic Rhinosinusitis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to compare the effect of steroid-impregnated spacers to that of conventional management after endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). METHODS: Six databases were searched from inception until November 2022. Sixteen studies were found that compared the improvement of chronic sinusitis-related symptoms and postoperative outcomes between a steroid-impregnated spacer group and a control group (non-steroid-impregnated spacers). The Cochrane risk of bias tool (for randomized controlled studies) and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (for non-randomized controlled studies) were used to assess the quality of the works included. RESULTS: Regarding the endoscopic findings, the degree of mucosal edema, ethmoid inflammation, crust formation at 2-3 months postoperatively, nasal discharge, polyposis, and scarring/synechia were significantly lower in the steroid-impregnated spacer group. The steroid-impregnated spacer group also showed significantly lower Lund-Kennedy scores and perioperative sinus endoscopy scores than the control group at 2-3 weeks postoperatively. Furthermore, the steroid-impregnated spacer group had lower rates of adhesions, middle turbinate lateralization, polypoid changes, the need for oral steroid use, the need for postoperative therapeutic interventions, and lysis of adhesions than controls. However, no significant between-group differences were found in short-term (2-3 weeks postoperatively) endoscopic findings regarding nasal discharge, postoperative crusting, polyposis, or scarring/synechia. CONCLUSION: Steroid-impregnated nasal packing reduced the rates of postoperative intervention and recurrent polyposis and inflammation in CRS patients undergoing ESS.
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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 | 0.007 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.017 | 0.025 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 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".