Abstract Aim The objective of this systematic review was to assess the effectiveness of different surgical techniques in the removal of benign parotid tumours. The analysis focused on three specific postoperative complications including: recurrence rate, temporary and permanent facial nerve palsy (FNP) and Frey's syndrome. In this systematic review, patients who underwent extracapsular dissection (ECD) were compared to those who underwent superficial parotidectomy (SP) or partial superficial parotidectomy (PSP). Method OVID, Cochrane Library, PubMed, and Scopus databases were searched. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied resulting in seven papers; all of which were retrospective cohort studies. Results A total of 2282 patient data was pooled (1174 ECD-treated and 1108 SP and PSP-treated patients). Statistical analysis showed there was no significant difference in the rate of recurrence (log odds ratio (LOR) = -0.15, 95% confidence interval (CI): -1.11, 0.80). There were lower rates of both temporary facial nerve injury (LOR = -1.76, 95% CI: -2.75,-0.76) and Frey’s syndrome (LOR = -1.63, 95% CI: -2.90,-0.37) in the ECD treated patients. There is reasonable statistical significance suggesting that ECD has lower rates of Permanent FNP (LOR=-1.00, 95% CI: -2.35, 0.35). Conclusions Despite the results showing ECD favourability in terms of FNP and Frey’s syndrome, it is important to understand the limitations of this study. Confounding factors such as, tumour size and placement, patient age and gender and surgical cosmetic outcomes were not analysed in this systematic review (SR). Future research should focus on a prospective cohort study, directly comparing the different surgical techniques.
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