The impact of endoscopic sinus surgery in pediatric patients with sinogenic intracranial infection: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE

This review aims to elucidate the role of endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) on the outcomes of pediatric patients with sinogenic intracranial infections.

METHODS

MEDLINE, Embase, and the Cochrane library were searched for articles that described the outcomes in pediatric patients who had intracranial complications of acute rhinosinusitis (ARS) and underwent ESS with or without open neurosurgical approaches (ONA) or external sinus approaches (ESA). Primary outcomes of interest include mortality, revision surgery, length of stay and neurological sequelae. Random effects meta-analysis was performed.

RESULTS

Forty-eight articles met the final eligibility criteria, totaling 710 pediatric patients and 905 intracranial complications. The most common complications were subdural empyema (n = 261, 29 %), epidural abscess (n = 213, 24 %), and Pott's Puffy tumor (PPT) (n = 95, 10 %). When comparing patients who underwent ESS (alone or combined with ONA) to those who underwent ONA only, there was a decreased risk of revision surgery (RR = 0.66, 95 % CI = 0.38-1.12 and RR = 0.63, 95 % CI = 0.36-1.09, respectively) and decreased risk of neurological sequelae (RR = 0.65, 95 % CI = 0.15-2.74 and RR = 0.50, 95 % CI = 0.20-1.26, respectively), however these differences were not statistically significant. When patients who underwent combined intervention were compared to ESS only, the risk of revision surgery (RR = 1.04, 95 % CI = 0.62-1.72) and neurological sequelae (RR = 0.99, 95 % CI = 0.37-2.64) were similar. Risk of mortality was minimal and similar across all interventions.

CONCLUSION

The current study including primarily small retrospective studies found no statistically significant differences between children who received ESS alone, ESS with ONA or ONA alone, on mortality, revision surgery, length of stay and neurological sequelae. Although ESS may be beneficial for managing certain pediatric sinogenic intracranial infections, its true effectiveness is difficult to determine due to the variability in the types of intracranial complications and the inconsistent extent of ESS procedures reported in the literature.