258 Ultrasonography-Guided Drainage Versus Surgical Drainage for Deep Neck Space Abscesses: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Aim Deep neck space abscesses (DNAs) are relatively common otolaryngology-head and neck surgery emergencies. We conducted the first and robust systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate outcomes for ultrasonography-guided drainage (USD) versus conventional surgical incision and drainage (I&D). Method The protocol was published a priori (PROSPERO: CRD42023466809) and the study adhered to PRISMA guidelines. MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane CENTRAL and key ENT journals were searched. Primary outcomes were length of hospital stay and recurrence. The secondary outcomes included scar formation/cosmetic, reported complications and cost savings. The quality of included studies was assessed using the Cochrane ROBINS-I and RoB2.0 tools. Fixed effects model was applied. Results Of 646 screened articles, seven studies enrolling 384 participants were included. USD was associated with a significantly shorter length of hospital stay (Mean Difference [MD] = -2.31, P < 0.00001), but no statistically significant difference was noted in the recurrence rate compared to I&D (odds ratio [OR] = 2.02, P = 0.21). USD appears to be associated with more cost-savings, better cosmetic outcomes, and fewer post-operative bleeding events. Conclusions USD appears to be associated with a shorter length of hospital stay, making it a viable and more cost-effective alternative. More randomized trials with adequate outcomes reporting are required to optimise the current evidence.
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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 | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.017 | 0.017 |
| 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; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
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".