Appendix Table 3:

Description of biases addressed by the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool.

Bias Domain	Issues Addressed
Sequence generation	Was the allocation random? Would it result in comparable groups?
Allocation concealment	Was the allocation sequence properly concealed? Could allocations have been foreseen?
Blinding of participants and personnel	Were study participants blinded from the study intervention that they received?
Blinding of outcome assessors	Were outcome assessors blinded from the study intervention participants received?
Incomplete outcome data	Was the outcome data complete? Were there any exclusions? Were they properly reported?
Selective outcome reporting	Was the possibility of selective outcome reporting addressed?
Other sources of bias	Were limitations addressed? Was there a large enough sample size for generalizations? Were there confounding variables contributing to the results? Were intervention groups demographically comparable?
Overall risk of bias	High means ≥ 2 high ratings; Medium means 1 high rating and ≤ 2 unclear ratings; Low means no high ratings and ≤ 2 unclear ratings