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                                    Chapter 11288when conducting this search: PubMed Central, Elsevier ScienceDirect Complete, Wiley Online Library Journals, Ovid Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, and Cochrane Library Plus. The following search terms were used: (“TMJ” OR “TMJ”) AND (“replacement”OR “prosthesis”) AND (“fat”). No time or language limitations were imposed. The inclusion criteria used in this study were TMJ ankylosis, therapy involving surgery, and the use of AFG. The patient sample had to consist of human patients, with no boundary set for age or sex. The exclusion criteria were articles not involving the TMJ, not involving a prosthetically treated TMJ, and articles with a main focus on medical imaging.The initial search returned 8011 articles. After removal of duplicates, this number was reduced to 6607. Screening of both the title and abstract led to a further reduction to 43 and 8 articles, respectively. These articles were then fully read, and by applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 7 articles were selected. No additional articles were included through handsearching the reference list of the included articles. A summary of this search can be found in the PRISMA flowchart.(Fig. 2)The quality assessment of the included studies was described with the effective public health practice project (EPHPP) quality assessment tool.(2) (Table 1) This tool evaluates eight different domains: selection bias, study design, confounders, blinding, data collection methods, withdrawal and dropouts, intervention integrity, and analysis. Each of these domains is given a rating of strong, moderate, or weak, yet only the first six domains make up for the global rating. If an article has no weak ratings and at least four strong ratings, it is considered strong. A moderate article has <4 strong ratings and no weak ratings, whereas an article is weak if it has at least two weak ratings. Normally, only strong and moderate articles are included in a review, yet as described in Table 1, all included articles have a weak quality based on the EPHPP instrument. Apart from the global rating, the overall intervention integrity of the studies included was considered strong regarding the number of patients receiving the intervention of interest, except a study by Wolford et al.(1), with a weak assessment due to <60% of all patients included receiving the intervention. Nikolas de Meurechy NW.indd 288 05-06-2024 10:15
                                
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