• Chaowei Yang and Xinming Yang.
• Graduate School of Hebei North University, Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, China.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2023 Mar 24; 102 (12): e33322e33322.

BackgroundAcute traumatic cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) is a catastrophic event with substantial physical, emotional, and economic burdens to patients, families, and society. Spinal cord decompression is recommended for the treatment of acute SCI. However, the optimal surgical timing remains controversial. Therefore, we perform a protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis to compare the efficacy of early and late surgical intervention for acute SCI.MethodsThis systematic review and meta-analysis follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocols statement, which have been registered in advance in the International prospective register of systematic reviews (registration number: CRD42023397592). We will search the following databases for randomized controlled trials: the Cochrane Skin Group Trials Register, MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, Chinese Medical Current Content, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure. The risk of bias of the included studies will be appraised using the Cochrane Collaboration tool for randomized controlled trials. Statistical analysis will be performed using IBM SPSS Statistics (Armonk, NY).ResultThe results of this systematic review will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.ConclusionThis systematic review will provide evidence regarding the optimal timing for spinal cord decompression in patients with acute SCI.Copyright © 2023 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

19 keywords...

hide…