Atelectasis causes post-op fever? Doubtful.

Mavros et al did the heavy lifting required to review 998 studies relating in some way to atelectasis and postoperative fever. They felt only 8 of those studies deserved analysis (990 were excluded either for not reporting sufficient data, or not focusing on the question at hand). One study reported an association between atelectasis and postop fever; the others did not. The studies were too heterogeneous to combine for a meta-analysis. CHEST 2011;140:418-424.