Search results
A total of 470 studies were identified from the database search, 338 did not meet the inclusion criteria and were therefore excluded. Of the 132 studies were retrieved for full-text evaluation, a total of 22 trials met the inclusion criteria[16-37]. Six trials were update reports of published trials[17, 25, 26, 28, 29, 33], one trial involving gastric or GEJ carcinoma[18]. Thus finally 15 randomized controlled trials were included in this meta-analysis (figure 1). Table 1 listed the baseline characteristics of patients and studies. The quality of each included study was roughly assessed according to Jadad scale, four trials[16, 21, 34, 37] were double-blind, placebo-controlled trials, thus had a Jadad score of 5, and the remaining eleven trials were open-label controlled trials, thus had a Jadad score of 3.