Schulze 1992.

Methods	RCT Approved by the ethics committee and written informed consent obtained Setting: Denmark Funding: charity
Participants	25 patients aged 67 to 79 years undergoing elective left‐side colonic resection Exclusion criteria were signs of endocrinological, renal, hepatic, immunological or severe cardiopulmonary disease or infection within 2 weeks before the operation
Interventions	Treatment group: thoracic epidural analgesia with lidocaine for surgery and bupivacaine plus morphine for 48 hours after surgery plus intrathecal 5% lidocaine and 30 mg/kg of methylprednisolone IV before surgery plus routine systematic indomethacin after surgery (n = 11) Control group: intermittent morphine and acetaminophen on request (n = 9)
Outcomes	Time to first faeces Pain at rest and during coughing at 6, 24, 48 and 72 hours Gastointestinal anastomotic leakage Length of hospital stay
Notes	Email sent 30 May 2016, for additional information; study authors replied that data are no longer available; therefore, we could extract only gastrointestinal leakage data
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	"randomized", no details
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Not mentioned
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Not mentioned
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Not mentioned
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	High risk	Excluded if blood losses exceeded 1 L, or if left colonic flexure mobilization was required Five participants were excluded ‐ 2 because of excessive bleeding (> 1 L), 2 because of excessive surgery due to tumour invasion and 1 because no tumour was found at operation
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	All results reported
Other bias	High risk	Treatment group also received a high dose of steroid and routine systemic co‐analgesia Not in intention‐to‐treat