Terlipressin vs. octreotide in bleeding esophageal varices as an adjuvant therapy with endoscopic band ligation: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Octreotide and Terlipressin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

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

Cirrhotic patients with esophageal variceal bleed were randomized on admission to receive terlipressin (group A) or octreotide (group B) along with the placebo in the other arm in a double-blind fashion.

How the Study Was Run

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

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

As a double-blind Octreotide study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Octreotide could be set against what happens without it.

Factors predicting length of stay were also assessed.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Chemotherapy, Adjuvant, Esophageal and Gastric Varices, Gastrointestinal Agents, Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage, Hemostasis, Endoscopic, Length of Stay and Ligation.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Octreotide and Terlipressin.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 11 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2009 (The American journal of gastroenterology), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Octreotide compound page and the Terlipressin compound page, all human trials.