Del Rio 1983.

Methods	Random allocation, but method of randomisation and concealment not mentioned Unclear blinding status No ITT analysis
Participants	Patients above 6 weeks of age (66/78 < 2 years). Patients with suspected or definite meningitis enrolled. Those with positive cultures and/or characteristic CSF findings were subsequently analysed. (Criteria for CSF findings not mentioned)
Interventions	Experimental arm: ceftriaxone (75 mg/kg i.v. loading dose followed by 50 mg/kg/dose i.v. 12 hrly) Control arm: ampicillin (200 mg/kg/day i.v. 6 hrly) and chloramphenicol (100 mg/kg/day i.v. 6 hrly) Duration of therapy: 7 days in both groups for meningococcal meningitis and 10 days for others
Outcomes	Death Sensorineural deafness (defined as > 30 dB hearing loss) Other disabilities Duration of fever Duration of follow‐up: 1 to 5 months Adverse effects noted in ceftriaxone group were diarrhoea, arthritis, phlebitis, raised SGOT and drug fever Adverse effects noted in conventional therapy group were diarrhoea, arthritis and drug fever
Notes	Study done in the USA 72/92 enrolled were culture positive
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Insufficient information about the sequence generation process
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Not reported
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Study did not address this
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	insufficient information
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk
Other bias	Unclear risk	Insufficient information