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Reply to the Letter to the Editor‐2 regarding “Extracapsular dissection versus superficial parotidectomy in benign parotid gland tumors: The Vienna Medical School experience”

Dear Editor, We would like to express our gratitude to Shang Xie for critically reading and analyzing our study. Parotid gland tumors and their surgical approaches are a highly interesting and controversial issue. One of his remarks included a potential bias of the different follow-up time of the 2 investigated cohorts. We are aware of the fact that different follow-up periods may have an influence on the outcome of parotid gland surgery. In this context, we currently submitted a manuscript analyzing the long-term results of parotid gland surgery with a minimum follow-up time of 10 years. Moreover, Shang Xie performed a meta-analysis of studies investigating parotid gland surgery that showed no difference between both methods. Indeed, we did not perform a meta-analysis and subsequent calculation of risk ratio and its respective confidence intervals. However, we could demonstrate that superficial parotidectomy is a very safe approach for benign parotid gland tumors in our study. We appreciate that parotid gland surgery is undergoing such a vivid discussion among the community of head and neck surgeons. Interestingly, levels Ia and Ib evidence are still missing to fully answer our questions regarding this topic.