Benefit of combination β-blocker and endoscopic treatment to prevent variceal rebleeding: A meta-analysis

Table 3 Combination therapy vs sclerotherapy

Study	Random- isation	Investigator blinding	Estimate of sample size	Intention to treat analysis	Poynard’s quality score (%)	Pagliaro’s quality score (%)
Combination therapy vs sclerotherapy
Westaby et al[36]	Yes	No	No	No	31	35
Jensen et al[37]	Yes	Double blinded	No	No	65	67
Bertoni et al[38]	Yes	Single blinded	No	No	54	44
Gerunda et al[39]	Yes	No	No	No	19	12
Lundell et al[40]	Yes	Single blinded	No	Yes	50	61
Kanazawa et al[32]	Yes	No	No	No	19	18
Vinel et al[41]	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	73	43
Acharya et al[42]	Yes	Double blinded	Yes	Yes	92	96
Avgerinos et al[43]	Yes	Single blinded	Yes	Yes	77	83
Villanueva et al[33]	Yes	No	No	No	55	67
Vickers et al[44]	Yes	Single blinded	Yes	Yes	83	74
Elsayed et al[34]	Yes	No	No	No	50	31
Benedeto-Stojanov et al[45]	Yes	NA	NA	NA	29	8
Dowidar et al[35]	Yes	Single blinded	No	No	54	50
Combination therapy vs banding ligation
Abdel-Rahim et al[46]	Yes	NA	NA	NA	8	17
Lo et al[12]	Yes	Single blinded	Yes	Yes	81	85
de la Peña et al[13]	Yes	No	Yes	No	69	82

NA: Not available.