User:Bob K31416/SA/sandbox

Nasopharyngeal stent
The following was moved here from the article page for discussion. (I corrected the link in ref #1 and the date in ref #2.) Similar material has been removed from the article several times before, but it seems that the editor who has been restoring it has been making an effort to improve it. Unfortunately it may have fundamental problems that are not correctable.


 * A new conservative therapy, especially for those patients being incompliant with CPAP therapy, is the nasopharyngeal stent, . This concept of mechanically splinting the throat and thereby preventing collapse of the airway passage has already been successfully clinically tested in the 1980ies in the U.S. before advent of CPAP by inserting latex tubes through the nose into the throat. Therapeutic efficacy was very good, yet long-term use led to mucosal irritation and patient incompliance. The new nasopharyngeal stent is a mesh made from thin nitinol wires, therefore very open-porous avoiding the disadvantages of the nasopharyngeal tube. Therapeutic efficacy and good patient compliance compared to CPAP have been proven in a clinical trial.


 * 1.
 * 2.
 * 3.
 * (Babelfish translation of ref #3.)

Comments:

1) Reference #1 is a manufacturer's website that is promoting the product and is not a reliable source, in my opinion.

2) Reference #3 is an abstract for a talk given at a conference and does not have a corresponding full text journal article. It briefly describes a study and doesn't go into much detail. For example, it does not mention the number of patients, which may be a very small number. The study appears to be only preliminary since a translation of the abstract says, "Conclusion: In further investigations it must be examined whether the positive results of this study are confirmed. If this applies, the nasopharyngeale Stent in selected cases represents an alternative to the CPAP therapy." Note that this contradicts the manufacturer's website of reference #1 which claims that the "results from the clinical study demonstrate therapeutic efficacy" of their device, which apparently isn't true according to the abstract. The edit appears to be promoting the product in a manner similar to the manufacturer. I'll assume this was unintentional. The edit makes a claim at the end that "Therapeutic efficacy and good patient compliance compared to CPAP have been proven in a clinical trial.[3]" Reference #3 didn't even mention patient compliance. --Bob K31416 (talk) 03:08, 20 September 2010 (UTC)