Does steroid-free immunosuppression improve the outcome in kidney transplant recipients compared to conventional protocols?

Table 1 The modified Jadad scale[37]

Item evaluated	Finding	Score
Was the study described as randomized?	Yes	+ 1
	No	0
Was the method of randomization appropriate?	Yes	+ 1
	No	- 1
	Not described	0
Was the study described as blinded? (double-blind with score 1; single-blind with score 0.5)	Yes	+ 1
	No	0
Was the method of blinding appropriate?	Yes	+ 1
	No	- 1
	Not described	0
Was there a description of withdrawals and dropouts?	Yes	+ 1
	No	0
Was there a clear description of the inclusion/exclusion criteria?	Yes	+ 1
	No	0
Was the method used to assess adverse effects described?	Yes	+ 1
	No	0
Were the methods of statistical analysis described?	Yes	+ 1
	No	0

The randomised controlled trials are scored between 0 (which is the lowermost quality) and 8 (the uppermost quality). Scores between 4 and 8 mean the articles considered of good to excellent quality, while articles with score 0 to 3 are of poor quality[37]. A data extraction sheet was prepared for summarizing the essence of the included studies as well as the quality assessment of the study as presented in Table 2.