The Beneficial Effect of Laryngeal Mask Airway on Cough Incidence: A Re-analysis

The meta-analysis by Yang et al. [1] compared the use of laryngeal mask airway (LMA) versus endotracheal tube (ETT) in pediatric patients undergoing laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair. They found that LMA use was associated with a lower incidence of cough than ETT use, based on pooled data from five trials including 402 patients [1]. This finding suggests that LMA may reduce this minor adverse event. However, we noticed that for the largest included study by Turk et al., with 148 patients (36.8% of the total sample size), the effect size for cough incidence could not be estimated.