SynthesisBrazilian journal of cardiovascular surgery2024
Comparison of the Effects of Full Median Sternotomy vs. Mini-Incision on Postoperative Pain in Cardiac Surgery: A Meta-Analysis.
Synthesis in Brazilian journal of cardiovascular surgery, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Totally Endoscopic Approach for Aortic Valve Replacement: A Systematic Review and Single-Arm Meta-Analysis.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Pooled it
- Comparative Study of Different Minimally Invasive Aortic Valve Replacement Techniques: A Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis.Interdisciplinary cardiovascular and thoracic surgery · 2025Pooled it
- The impact of comorbidities on surgical outcome and mortality in minimally invasive mitral valve surgery: a systematic review.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of scar formation and depression and anxiety symptoms in patients after cardiac surgery.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Pain Management in Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery: A Review of Current Clinical Evidence.Pain and therapy · 2025Review
- Enhanced Recovery and Reduced Complications with Minimally Invasive Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting Compared to Open Sternotomy.Acta informatica medica : AIM : journal of the Society for Medical Informatics of Bosnia & Herzegovina : casopis Drustva za medicinsku informatiku BiH · 2025Article
- Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Cardiac Healthcare Workers Toward Thoracoscopic Surgery in Xinjiang: A Cross-Sectional Study.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionIt is not yet clear whether cardiac surgery by mini-incision (minimally invasive cardiac surgery [MICS]) is overall less painful than the conventional approach by full sternotomy (FS). A meta-analysis is necessary to investigate polled results on this topic.
methodsPubMed®/MEDLINE, Cochrane CENTRAL, Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature (or LILACS), and Scientific Electronic Library Online (or SciELO) were searched for all clinical trials, reported until 2022, comparing FS with MICS in coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), mitral valve surgery (MVS), and aortic valve replacement (AVR), and postoperative pain outcome was analyzed. Main summary measures were the method of standardized mean differences (SMD) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) and P-values (considered statistically significant when < 0.05).
resultsIn AVR, the general estimate of postoperative pain effect favored MICS (SMD 0.87 [95% CI 0.04 to 1.71], P=0.04). However, in the sensitivity analysis, there was no difference between the groups (SMD 0.70 [95% CI -0.69 to 2.09], P=0.32). For MVS, it was not possible to perform a meta-analysis with the included studies, because they had different methodologies. In CABG, the general estimate of the effect of postoperative pain did not favor any of the approaches (SMD -0.40 [95% CI -1.07 to 0.26], P=0.23), which was confirmed by sensitivity analysis (SMD -0.02 [95% CI -0.71 to 0.67], P=0.95).
conclusionMICS was not globally less painful than the FS approach. It seems that postoperative pain is more related to the degree of tissue retraction than to the size of the incision.
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