Effect of topical nitroglycerin application on flap survival and complications post reconstructive microsurgery: A systematic review and meta-analysis study of the literature
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background and Aims: Several methods have been used in plastic and reconstructive surgery to reduce post-surgical complications, such as partial or complete flap loss due to ischemia and necrosis. Nitroglycerine application has been introduced as a viable alternative to papaverine to act as a local vasodilator to improve perfusion and reduce vasospasm. However, the literature has not thoroughly studied its efficacy and administration dose. This systematic review and meta-analysis study has been designed to assess the efficacy of topical nitroglycerine applications in reducing post-surgical flap necrosis and complications. Methods and Materials: A systematic literature search was performed on PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science from inception to January 2023 with relevant keywords and terms. Case reports, review articles, letters, articles in any language other than English, and animal studies were excluded. The Newcastle-Ottawa and Jadad scales were used to assess the quality of the included studies. The pooled effect sizes were calculated using the random effect model with the Mantel-Haenszel method. Results: Overall, 2031 studies were obtained, among which 454 articles were duplicated and removed. Of the remaining 1577 articles, based on the eligibility and exclusion criteria, 20 articles were retrieved for full-text review. Finally, eight articles were included in our study. Three thousand nine hundred six patients had undergone reconstructive microsurgery and received topical nitroglycerin for the prevention of possible complications. The pooled rate of flap complication was 15% (95% CI: 8% to 25%, I 2 = 96%, p-value < 0.01), and the pooled odds ratio of flap complication was 0.35 (95% CI: 0.15 to 0.83, I 2 = 91%, p-value = 0.02). The heterogeneity of the included studies was significantly high. The dose and regimen of application significantly differed between each study. Conclusion: Topical administration of nitroglycerin compounds post reconstructive microsurgery can reduce the risk of flap necrosis. However, the precise dosage, duration of application, and possible underlying factors affecting drug efficacy are yet to be discovered.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.009 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".