Dentice 2016.

Study characteristics
Methods	RCT. Design: parallel. Duration: 3‐day study which began towards the end of hospitalisation for an exacerbation (approximately 14 days) with follow‐up for 1 year. If re‐admission within that year, participant invited to repeat 3‐day study. Location: Australian multicentre trial.
Participants	132 adults with CF admitted to hospital with a respiratory exacerbation. Age: mean (SD) 28 (9) years. 49% were female. FEV1 % predicted: mean (SD) 48 (20)%.
Interventions	Group 1: 3x daily nebulisation of 4 mL HS 7%. Group 2: IS 0.12% (taste‐masked). Treatment was administered via Pari LC with jet nebuliser Interventions given immediately before or during physiotherapy.
Outcomes	Length of hospital stay, lung function, oxygenation, bacterial load, symptom scores, QoL, exercise tolerance, time to relapse.
Notes
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	High risk	Done sequentially upon admission.
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	High risk	Allocation was sequential.
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Taste of intervention and control masked by quinine.
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Investigators blinded to intervention.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	No drop outs.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	All outcomes reported.
Other bias	Low risk	None apparent.