| Methods |
Design: three group parallel trial
Purpose: examine the preventive effect of acupressure on nausea and vomiting after surgery |
| Participants |
Patients: women undergoing minor gynaecological surgery
Baseline comparability: yes |
| Interventions |
Placebo: acupressure on a site which was not P6 during hospital stay
Untreated: no acupressure
Experimental: acupressure on P6
(Co‐intervention: metoclopramide and droperidol at request ) |
| Outcomes |
Proportion of patients with complete response (no nausea, vomiting, or rescue medication) after 24 hours
Nausea (only)
Vomiting
Rescue medication
Nausea after 24 hours |
| Notes |
In the no treatment group 6/20 had nausea at discharge, and 8/20 after 24 hours. The corresponding numbers for the placebo group were 7/20 and 1/20. According to protocol we extracted data at post‐treatment (discharge). 10 out of 60 patients dropped out ('evenly distributed between the groups') and were replaced by 10 new patients |
| Risk of bias |
| Bias |
Authors' judgement |
Support for judgement |
| Adequate sequence generation? |
Unclear risk |
NS |
| Allocation concealment? |
Unclear risk |
NS |
| Blinding?
Treatment provider |
High risk |
'The study was double‐blind...' but this referred to blinding of patient and outcome assessor. |
| Blinding?
Outcome assessor |
Unclear risk |
Not relevant as patients reported outcome |
| Incomplete outcome data addressed?
All outcomes |
High risk |
Drop‐out >15% or NS |
| Free of selective reporting? |
Unclear risk |
No protocol available |
| Free of other bias? |
Low risk |
|
| No signs of variance inequality or skewness? |
Unclear risk |
Not relevant (binary outcome) |
| Trial size > 49? |
High risk |
N = 40 |
| Clearly concealed allocation + trial size > 49 + drop‐out max 15% |
High risk |
Drop‐out >15% or NS |
