The combination of octreotide and midodrine is not superior to albumin in preventing recurrence of ascites after large-volume paracentesis

What Was Tested

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

Large-volume paracentesis (LVP) is the treatment of choice for patients with cirrhosis and refractory ascites.

The researchers performed a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to compare albumin with the vasoconstrictor combination of octreotide and midodrine in patients with refractory ascites who underwent LVP.

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.

Patients were followed up until recurrence of ascites.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and multicenter.

Because people in this Octreotide study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Octreotide.

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

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

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Ascites, Midodrine, Octreotide, Paracentesis, Secondary Prevention, Serum Albumin and Serum Albumin, Human.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

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 2012 (Clinical gastroenterology and hepatology : the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Octreotide compound page.