Cuendet 1988.

Study characteristics
Methods	Parallel design (2 arms) Country: Switzerland Follow‐up period: 24 hours
Participants	Randomly assigned: N = 19 Lidocaine group: 47.3% (9/19) Pirmenol group: 52.6% (10/19) Age, years, mean (SE or SD) Total group: 57.4 (9.1) By comparison group: not reported Gender, male, % (n/N) Total group: 95 (18/19) By comparison group: not reported Inclusion criteria Presence of ≥ 2 premature ventricular contractions/min R/T premature ventricular contractions ≥ 2 polymorphic premature ventricular contractions/5 min Exclusion criteria: not reported
Interventions	Lidocaine, infusion at mean dose of 42 (8.8) µg/min/kg Pirmenol, infusion at mean dose of 6.1 (1.6) µg/min/kg Co‐interventions: not reported
Outcomes	Prevalence of ventricular arrhythmias (non‐ventricular fibrillation). Safety
Notes	A priori sample size estimation: no Sponsor: not reported Data were taken from "Resumés du XVIII. Congres de I Union Therapeutique Internationale" (date: unclear)
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	" ...have been randomised..." (page 158) Insufficient information about the sequence generation process to permit judgement of ‘low risk’ or ‘high risk’
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Insufficient information about the allocation concealment process to permit judgement of ‘low risk’ or ‘high risk’
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Quote: "Double blind randomized study" (page 158) Insufficient information to permit judgement of ‘low risk’ or ‘high risk’
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Insufficient information to permit judgement of ‘low risk’ or ‘high risk’
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	The report gave the impression that no dropouts or withdrawals had occurred, but this was not specifically stated
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	High risk	The study report fails to include results for a key outcome that would be expected to have been reported in such a study Comment: This study did not report mortality and ventricular fibrillation ≥ 1 outcomes of interest in the review are reported incompletely, so they cannot be entered into a meta‐analysis Quote: "...side effects have been observed in 10 pts, 5 in each group, but interruption of treatment was not necessary" (page 158)
Other bias	High risk	Design bias (Porta 2008) Bias in presentation of data (Porta 2008)