📃 Paper Title: Intermittent self-dilatation for urethral stricture disease in males
🧍 Author: Matthew J Jackson
🕒 Year: 2014
📚 Journal: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
🌎 Country: United Kingdom
ㅤContext to the study:
Can you tell me about a systematic review of trials that did not show clinically significant benefits of Intermittent self‐dilatation for urethral stricture disease?
ㅤ✅ Take-home message of study:
Recurrent urethral stricture is less likely in men who performed intermittent self-dilatation than men who did not perform intermittent self-dilatation; however quality of assessed evidence is low.
ㅤ Systematic Review of Randomised and Quasi-randomised trials
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Study participants:
11 trials were selected, which included a total of 776 men
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Key study outcomes:
Primary outcomes:
Patient-reported symptoms and health-related quality of life
Risk of recurrence.
Secondary outcomes:
Adverse events
Acceptability of the intervention to patients
Cost-effectiveness
Meta-analysis showed no evidence of differences between performing intermittent self-dilatation and not performing it (RR 0.60, 95% CI 0.11 to 3.26)
Data indicated that recurrent urethral stricture was less likely in men who performed intermittent self-dilatation than men who did not perform intermittent self-dilatation (RR 0.70, 95% CI 0.48 to 1.00)
Author's conclusions: performing intermittent self-dilatation may confer a reduced risk of recurrent urethral stricture after endoscopic treatment however the quality of evidence of low.
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Study Limitations:
Studies reviewed were generally small; all were of poor quality and all were deemed to have a higher risk of bias.
Adverse events were poorly reported (2 trials did not report any and another 2 trials reported adverse events only for the intervention group)
No trials reported on lower UTI symptoms, quality of life, cost-effectiveness
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