Meta-analysis of effects of vibration sputum expulsion and artificial sputum expulsion on prevention of ventilator-associated pneumonia in patients with severe traumatic brain injury

Objective To systematically evaluate the effects of vibration sputum expulsion and artificial sputum expulsion on preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) in patients with severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI).Methods The relevant literature in PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, CBM, CNKI, VIP and WanFang database were searched from inception to March 2024. Related studies on preventing VAP in patients with sTBI using vibration and artificial sputum expulsion were collected. Two researchers independently screened the literature, extracted data, and evaluated the risk of bias for included study. RevMan 5.4 software was used for Meta-analysis.Results A total of 8 studies were included, including 7 randomized controlled trials and 1 non-randomized controlled trial, with 967 study subjects. The Meta-analysis results showed that compared with artificial sputum expulsion, vibration sputum expulsion could reduce the incidence of VAP [RR=0.49, 95%CI(0.37, 0.64), P