Low-quality Trials as a Source of Heterogeneity in the Association of Hydroxyethyl Starch 130/0.4 or 0.42 with Excess Mortality in Sepsis

In the methods section, they stated that risk assessment was performed as advised by the Cochrane collaboration. Assessment includes “randomization sequence generation,” “allocation concealment,” “blinding,” “incomplete outcome data,” and “selective outcome reporting.” In Table 2 of Ma et al.[1] however, assessed domains differed with “intention‐to‐treat analysis” and “no loss to follow‐up” replacing “incomplete outcome data” and “selective outcome reporting.” The Cochrane collaboration’s tool for assessing the risk of bias recommends that assessment of “other potential bias” be included, however, no such attempts were made, but bias assessment appears incomplete and flawed.