Patients and Data
After an approval by our institution’s review board, a retrospective study of all patients above 18 years of age who underwent parotidectomy (including total, superficial or partial parotidectomy) at our department between 2016 and 2020 was performed.
Prior to November 2019 all patients were drained following parotid surgery. From November 2019 onwards a shift in practice has been made and all patients were treated with Evicel (Evicel Airless Spray Accessory, Omrix Biopharmaceuticals Ltd, Ethicon Inc, Somerville, NJ) FS without drainage regardless of the extent of parotid surgery. No other changes were made in the procedure, instrumentation or surgical technique. The extent of surgery was determined at the surgeon’s discretion, based on the tumor’s location, cytology, size, etc.
The FS group included all patients in whom an Evicel FS was placed in the surgical bed at the end of the operation and a drain was not inserted. The control group included patients in whom a drain (BIOVAC closed wound drainage system, Biometrix, Jerusalem, Israel) was inserted at the end of the operation. The control group patients were matched (eliminating significant difference) for age, sex, body mass index (BMI), surgery type, tumor type and size (see below) with the FS group patients. Exclusion criteria included patients with missing pertinent data, patients who underwent neck dissection in addition to parotid surgery, patients with a history of neck irradiation and patients in whom both drainage and FS were used at the end of the surgery.