Barret 1999.
Methods | RCT, double‐blind | |
Participants | 94 children (mean age 7.5 years) admitted to a US burn centre, ages between 1 and 18 years, n = 60 male. Burns > 40% TBSA + > 10% full‐thickness (third‐degree). Admitted within 3 days of injury. At least 1 donor site required. | |
Interventions | rhGH 0.2 mg/kg/day (n = 45) or saline as a placebo (n = 49) administered by subcutaneous injection for the entire acute‐phase hospital stay (mean = 34.5 days, SD = 52.3) | |
Outcomes | Burn Scar Rating Scale (Yeong 1997), % of people requiring reconstruction, number of plastic surgery operations in the first 2 years, time from injury to reconstructive operations in months. Burn scars were assessed by 3 experienced burn surgeons. | |
Funding | Not reported | |
Notes | Kappa interrater agreement was 0.78 for surface, 0.80 for border height, 0.72 for thickness, 0.81 for colour difference Only medians and ranges are given for Burn Scar Rating Scale categories, operations per patient and time from injury to reconstruction Ranges should not be used to estimate standard deviations (Higgins 2011b) The contacted authors could not provide additional data. Only data on percentage of people requiring reconstruction were included in this review. |
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Risk of bias | ||
Bias | Authors' judgement | Support for judgement |
Random sequence generation (selection bias) | Unclear risk | Method of randomisation not reported |
Allocation concealment (selection bias) | Unclear risk | Not reported |
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes | Low risk | Observers were blinded to treatment |
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes | Low risk | Patient follow‐up was completed for 95% of the participants |
Selective reporting (reporting bias) | Unclear risk | Unclear. Study protocol was not available. |