Methods	RCT
Participants	40 women with severe dysplasia/in situ carcinoma of the uterine cervix who underwent cervical conisation Mean age in the trial was 34.8 years (SD=5.7 years) There were 31 (77.5%) women with CIN II and 9 (22.5%) with CIN 3
Interventions	Interventions: Unipolar energy scalpel (Medizin-Elektronik Elektroton 300, MARTIN, Tuttlingen, Germany) Biopolar electrocautery scissors (Power Star; Ethicon, Inc, Somerville, NJ) Biopolar electrocautery scissors are easy to handle; they have the same shape as surgical scissors, with an isolated nylon handle, and the two blades are separated by a thin ceramic layer, thus producing two active bipolar electrodes
Outcomes	Duration of procedure Peri-operative blood loss Duration of recovery Number of haemorrhages Adequacy of margins of the lesion
Notes	Primary haemorrhage was deduced by fact that, haemorrhages was for number of women, therefore it had to be a woman’s first haemorrhage Adequacy of margins of the lesion: bipolar scissors: 11/20, monopolar scalpel: 9/20 Healing of cervix: bipolar scissors: 28.3 days (SD=4.4 days), monoploar scalpel: 35.2 days (SD=6.3 days) Duration of recovery: bipolar scissors: 3.5 days (SD=1.5 days), monoploar scalpel: 6.4 days (SD=3.2 days) There were no infections in either group.
Risk of bias
Item	Authors’ judgement	Description
Adequate sequence generation?	Yes	“Monopolar or bipolar assignment was obtained by means of a table of random digits”
Allocation concealment?	Yes	“Surgical methods were assigned randomly by drawing a sealed envelope … An independent party filled and sealed the envelopes which were placed in a sealed box”
Blinding? All outcomes	Unclear	Not reported
Incomplete outcome data addressed? All outcomes	Yes	% analysed: 40/40 (100%)
Free of selective reporting?	Unclear	Insufficient information to permit judgement
Free of other bias?	Unclear	Insufficient information to assess whether an important risk of bias exists