Is antibiotic prophylaxis in nasal packing for anterior epistaxis needed?

Epistaxis is an extremely common problem that sometimes requires anterior nasal packing. Antibiotics are frequently indicated to prevent infectious complications, although the role of this measure is controversial. Searching in Epistemonikos database, which is maintained by screening 30 databases, we identified one systematic review including three primary studies, none of them randomized. We combined the evidence using meta-analysis and generated a summary of findings table following the GRADE approach. We concluded it is not clear whether prophylactic antibiotics reduce infectious complications in patients with nasal packing for anterior epistaxis because the certainty of the evidence is very low.