Flexible and navigable suction ureteral access sheath versus traditional ureteral access sheath for flexible ureteroscopy in renal and proximal ureteral stones: a meta-analysis of efficacy and safety
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Traditional ureteral access sheaths (T-UAS) are limited by rigidity and lack of suction, potentially increasing complications. Flexible and navigable suction ureteral access sheaths (FANS-UAS) offer improved maneuverability and active suction, but comparative evidence on their efficacy and safety is scarce. This meta-analysis evaluates FANS-UAS versus T-UAS in flexible ureteroscopy (fURS). METHODS: A systematic search across PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science (from inception to February 2025) identified studies comparing FANS-UAS and T-UAS. Included were RCTs and observational studies with ≥ 20 patients. Outcomes included stone-free rates (SFRs), operative time, hospital stay, and complications. Study quality was assessed using the Jadad Scale for RCTs and Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) for observational studies. RESULTS: Eight studies (1 RCT, 7 observational; 1,816 patients: 866 FANS-UAS, 950 T-UAS) were analyzed. Compared to T-UAS, FANS-UAS demonstrated significantly higher stone-free rates (SFRs) at both postoperative day 1 (OR = 4.01, 95% CI: 1.98-8.11) and 30-day follow-up (OR = 2.37, 95% CI: 1.62-3.46). FANS-UAS was associated with a lower risk of postoperative fever (OR = 0.31, 95% CI: 0.21-0.47). Operative time trended longer with FANS-UAS (MD = 2.64 min, 95% CI: -2.56 to 7.84; p = 0.32), though without statistical significance, while hospital stay showed no difference between groups (MD = - 0.07 days, 95% CI: -0.16 to 0.01; p = 0.1). CONCLUSION: FANS-UAS provides superior stone clearance and reduced complications versus T-UAS, with only slightly longer operative time. The integrated suction system enables these advantages through improved fragment removal and pressure control. Further RCTs should confirm these benefits.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 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 it