Prophylaxis of ERCP-related pancreatitis: a randomized, controlled trial of somatostatin and gabexate mesylate

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Somatostatin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 1127 patients were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

Patients were evaluated clinically, and serum amylase levels were determined at 4, 24, and 48 hours after endoscopy.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and multicenter study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Somatostatin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the patients nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Somatostatin, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Somatostatin group a baseline to be compared against.

Running at several centres spread the Somatostatin study over different clinics and patient groups.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Chemoprevention, Cholangiopancreatography, Endoscopic Retrograde, Gabexate, Gastrointestinal Agents, Incidence, Pancreatitis and Somatostatin.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Somatostatin in 1127 patients.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2004 (Clinical gastroenterology and hepatology : the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Somatostatin compound page, all human trials.