Cyanoacrylate Injection Compared with Band Ligation for Acute Gastric Variceal Hemorrhage: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials and Observational Studies

Table 2

Methodological quality of nonrandomized studies.

Author	Selection			Comparability		Assessment of outcome		NOS score
	Item 1	Item 2	Item 3	Item 4	Item 5	Item 6	Item 7
Lo et al. [15] 2013	*	*	*		**	*	*	7
Hong et al. [16] 2013	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	7
Tantau et al. [17] 2014	*	*	*	**	**	*	*	9

Item 1: inclusion criteria reported; item 2: generalizability of patients with cyanoacrylate injection to population with acute gastric variceal hemorrhage; item 3: generalizability of patients with banding ligation to population with acute gastric variceal hemorrhage; item 4: age, gender, and etiology (2 stars if yes to all; 1 star if one of these parameters was not reported; no stars if the two groups differed); item 5: presence of hepatocellular carcinoma, Child-Pugh class, encephalopathy (2 stars if yes to all; 1 star if one of these parameters was not reported; no stars if the two groups differed); item 6: clearly defined outcome of interest; item 7: adequacy of followup (1 star if followup >90%). NOS: Newcastle-Ottawa scale.