Prognosis and prediction of antibiotic benefit in adults with clinically diagnosed acute rhinosinusitis: an individual participant data meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: A previous individual participant data meta-analysis (IPD-MA) of antibiotics for adults with clinically diagnosed acute rhinosinusitis (ARS) showed a marginal overall effect of antibiotics, but was unable to identify patients that are most likely to benefit from antibiotics when applying conventional (i.e. univariable or one-variable-at-a-time) subgroup analysis. We updated the systematic review and investigated whether multivariable prediction of patient-level prognosis and antibiotic treatment effect may lead to more tailored treatment assignment in adults presenting to primary care with ARS. METHODS: An IPD-MA of nine double-blind placebo-controlled trials of antibiotic treatment (n=2539) was conducted, with the probability of being cured at 8–15 days as the primary outcome. A logistic mixed effects model was developed to predict the probability of being cured based on demographic characteristics, signs and symptoms, and antibiotic treatment assignment. Predictive performance was quantified based on internal-external cross-validation in terms of calibration and discrimination performance, overall model fit, and the accuracy of individual predictions. RESULTS: Results indicate that the prognosis with respect to risk of cure could not be reliably predicted (c-statistic 0.58 and Brier score 0.24). Similarly, patient-level treatment effect predictions did not reliably distinguish between those that did and did not benefit from antibiotics (c-for-benefit 0.50). CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, multivariable prediction based on patient demographics and common signs and symptoms did not reliably predict the patient-level probability of cure and antibiotic effect in this IPD-MA. Therefore, these characteristics cannot be expected to reliably distinguish those that do and do not benefit from antibiotics in adults presenting to primary care with ARS. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41512-023-00154-0.