Postoperative complications
Various postoperative complications were retrieved from enrolled studies. We analyzed the incidence of postoperative complications, with a particular focus on the infection (wet ear), wound gap, visible scar, nausea and vomiting. Incidence of postoperative complications was reported in ten studies.
Data regarding the infection (wet ear) were available from six studies with a total of 486 interventions. Three studies reported data on the wound gap with a total of 210 interventions. Based on the pooled analysis, ET showed a non-significant difference compared to MT in terms of the rates of infection (6.3% vs. 7.3%; OR: 0.94; 95% CI 0.46 to 1.94; p = 0.87) and wound gap (0.9% vs. 6.3%; OR: 0.25; 95% CI 0.05 to 1.30; p = 0.10). Also, no heterogeneity was found.
Data regarding visible scar, we found three studies with a total of 220 interventions. Two studies reported data on postoperative nausea and vomiting, with a total of 160 interventions for each. In the pooled analysis, ET showed a highly significant decrease compared to MT in terms of the rates of visible scar (0% vs. 72.7%; OR: 0.01; 95% CI 0.00 to 0.03; p < 0.00001), nausea (36.3% vs. 67.5%; OR: 0.27; 95% CI 0.14 to 0.53; p = 0.0001), and vomiting (12.5% vs. 43.8%; OR: 0.18; 95% CI 0.08 to 0.41; p < 0.0001). In addition, no heterogeneity was found.
The overall effect of pooling the previous five subgroups showed that the rate of complications is significantly lower in ET than in MT (8.8% vs. 32%; OR: 0.24; 95% CI 0.12 to 0.49; p < 0.0001) (Figure 6).