Asmatullah 2014.

Methods	Two‐arm, non‐blinded, parallel‐group RCT, with 10 days duration of treatment and 2‐week duration of follow‐up
Participants	Location: Pakistan, 1 site Setting of recruitment and treatment: ENT Department, Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar, January to July 2012 Sample size: 134 Number randomised: 67 in gentamycin, 67 in ofloxacin Number completed: 67 in gentamycin, 67 in ofloxacin Participant (baseline) characteristics: Age: gentamycin: 27.57 ± 9.16 years; ofloxacin: 27.76 ± 7.25 years Gender (F/M): 54 (40.3%)/80 (59.7%) Main diagnosis: active tubotympanic type of CSOM High‐risk population: unclear Cleft palate (or other craniofacial malformation): not reported Down syndrome: not reported Indigenous groups (Australian Aboriginals/Greenland natives): not reported Immunocompromised: not reported Diagnosis method: Confirmation of perforated tympanic membrane: unclear Presence of mucopurulent discharge: not reported At baseline 'Severe' otorrhoea: gentamycin: 62.7%, ofloxacin: 70.2% 'Moderate' otorrhoea: gentamycin: 37.3%, ofloxacin: 29.8% Duration of symptoms (discharge): not reported Other important effect modifiers: Alternative diagnosis of ear discharge: not reported Number who have previously had grommets inserted: not reported Number who have had previous ear surgery: not reported (mastoid surgery was an exclusion criterion) Number who had previous antibiotic treatment for CSOM: not reported (these were excluded if 2 weeks prior to trial) Inclusion criteria: Patients above 16 years of any gender having active tubotympanic type of chronic suppurative otitis media Exclusion criteria: Antibiotics in the last 2 weeks Those with marginal perforation Cholesteatoma Aural polyps History of mastoid surgery
Interventions	Intervention (n = 67): gentamycin 0.3% ear drops, 4 drops 3 times daily, treatment continued for 10 days Comparator group (n = 67): ofloxacin 0.3% ear drops, 4 drops 3 times daily, treatment continued for 10 days Concurrent treatment: none listed. No aural toileting methods mentioned.
Outcomes	Outcomes of interest in the review: Primary outcomes: Resolution of ear discharge, measured at between 1 week to 2 weeks. Otoscopically confirmed. Secondary outcomes: Not reported
Funding sources	No information provided
Declarations of interest	No information provided
Notes	Unit of randomisation: person Methods for including patients with bilateral disease: not reported
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Quote: "All patients were allocated into two groups by randomization done by lottery method." Comment: not enough information to know whether this method was sufficient to generate a sufficiently randomised sequence
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Comment: no methods regarding allocation concealment were reported
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	High risk	Comment: there is no mention of blinding for any of the outcomes despite the ability to blind the trial (same treatment regimen)
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	Comment: there is no mention of blinding the treatment outcome. There may have been bias when judging the marginal cases such as the boundary between 'mild' and 'no' discharge.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Comment: the description of patient allocation is not clear within the paper. Although the paper does not appear to have lost patients to follow‐up, there is no clear statement of this. It is unclear whether only patients included in the outcome were reported.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	High risk	Comment: no trial protocol was mentioned in the paper or found on the clinicaltrials.gov website. The levels of discharge were not well defined in the methods section. In addition, there was no defined measuring or indeed mention of adverse events anywhere within the paper.