Surgical Management of Moderate to Severe Epistaxis in Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Background: Epistaxis is one of the most common and debilitating symptoms of hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), significantly impacting patients' quality of life. While various medical and surgical interventions exist for managing epistaxis in patients with HHT, patients with moderate to severe epistaxis are high health-care utilizers who frequently need surgical treatment.
Objective: To compare the efficacy, complications, and patient-reported outcomes for common surgical interventions utilized in treating epistaxis in patients with HHT.
Methods: Studies were identified in PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Redalyc, and LILACS databases and uploaded to Covidence. A systematic review following PRISMA guidelines was conducted on studies evaluating outcomes in adults with HHT with moderate to severe epistaxis who had undergone surgical interventions. We compared the respective outcomes for pre-operative and post-operative epistaxis severity/intensity, need for further interventions or transfusions, estimated blood loss, length of surgery, complications, and patient satisfaction.
Results: Twenty studies with a total of 546 patients were included. The most common surgeries studied were nasal closure and laser photocoagulation. Seven studies recorded the change in epistaxis severity score and observed a significant reduction postoperatively (3.91, [95% CI 2.73-5.09]). Eleven studies found a decrease in the number of transfusions and a rise in hemoglobin levels post-operatively. Common complications reported were partial dehiscence of a nasal closure, septal perforation, and continued bleeding requiring re-operation. Most patients report improved quality of life and satisfaction with surgical intervention.
Conclusion: Surgery can significantly reduce the severity of epistaxis in patients with HHT and improve quality of life. Further studies should focus on head-to-head comparisons of procedures and standardization of outcome measures.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.