Salivary gland endoscopy in children: A systematic review

Objective: To review studies on sialendoscopy (SE) of the salivary glands in children focusing mainly on the indications, endoscopic findings, and effectiveness of the procedure. Method: The electronic databases searched were Pubmed, Scielo, and Cochrane. The search was conducted by two researchers independently, following inclusion and exclusion criteria. A third author analyzed sources of conflict. In the first stage they were discarded by reading the articles title that had no relation to the purpose of the study and then evaluated the abstracts of each study. In these two initial phases 37 articles were excluded. Articles not excluded by the selection criteria have been retrieved and assessed in full. Seven articles had their data extracted and were compared. Results: The literature search parameters listed allowed the recovery of 44 articles. After applying the exclusion criteria, seven studies were included in this review representing 207 patients undergoing with ages ranging from 1 to 16 years. All studies except one underwent SE under general anesthesia. The juvenile recurrent parotitis was the main clinical diagnosis related with SE procedures (N = 152). The number of inflammatory attacks per patient per year was the parameter for indication of SE. The efficacy of the procedure was considered high by all authors ranging between 83 and 93% in larger series evaluated. Conclusion: Sialendoscopy is a safe and effective procedure for the diagnosis and treatment of recurrent inflammatory diseases of salivary glands in children.