Efficacy of nonmedicated middle meatal packing after endoscopic sinus surgery: A systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objectives: This review aims to evaluate the utility of nonmedicated middle meatal packing compared to no packing on synechia formation up to 12 weeks after endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) for chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). Methods: We conducted a systematic review according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. A literature search was performed on Medline (PubMed), EBSCO CINAHL plus, CENTRAL, and Clinicaltrials.org and included randomized controlled trials in the English language only. We extracted all relevant data and conducted quality assessment using the Cochrane risk of Bias tool (version 2). We also performed the quality assessment of the outcomes using Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation. Results: Our search identified 390 articles of which four met our eligibility criteria. A total of 139 patients were randomized to receive middle meatal pack in either of the nostrils. At 4 weeks of follow-up, there was no difference in the risk of synechia formation on either the packed side or the unpacked side, with a relative risk (RR) of 0.77 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.48-1.25). Similarly, no difference was seen at either 8-12 weeks of follow-up, with an RR of 0.68 (95% CI: 0.42-1.20). Nasal congestion was reported to be less on the packed side on the follow-up in one of the trials. Conclusions: Our systematic review, with limited evidence, indicates no difference in synechia formation between the nonmedicated packed and unpacked middle meatus at four and eight or 12 weeks after ESS for CRS. Further studies are required to ascertain the true effect of packing the middle meatus with different materials and its long-term sequelae.
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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 | 0.033 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.012 | 0.012 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| 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".