| Methods |
RCT. Method of randomisation, allocation concealment and blinding of participants and investigators (including outcome assessors) not reported. |
| Participants |
62 patients (mean age 33 years) with partial thickness burns admitted into a burn centre within 24 hours of injury |
| Interventions |
Hydrogel dressing versus SSD, paraffin gauze or paraffin gauze with antibiotics |
| Outcomes |
Time to complete wound healing
Level of pain
Number of dressing changes
Adverse events |
| Notes |
|
| Risk of bias |
| Bias |
Authors' judgement |
Support for judgement |
| Random sequence generation (selection bias) |
Unclear risk |
Described as "randomised clinical trial" in the abstract only; no description of method. Patients were not randomised but similar sites on each patient were randomised, so the patients had their own control. |
| Allocation concealment (selection bias) |
Unclear risk |
Not reported |
| Blinding (performance bias and detection bias)
All outcomes |
Unclear risk |
No description of care protocols. Very unlikely because some of the controls received oral antibiotics. |
| Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias)
All outcomes |
Unclear risk |
Withdrawals not reported |
| Selective reporting (reporting bias) |
High risk |
Results not clearly reported for any outcomes |
| Other bias |
High risk |
(1) Patients acted as own control, giving rise to potential unit of analysis errors; (2) control therapy varied and allocation not described. |
