Efficacy of octreotide in the prevention of pancreatic fistula after elective pancreatic resections: a prospective, controlled, randomized clinical trial

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Octreotide in the context of pancreatitis (after the acute phase), published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 1992, patients taking part.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Between July 1990 and May 1992, 278 patients were enrolled in the study.

There were 131 men and 87 women with a mean age of 58.2 +/- 11.7 yrs.

How the Study Was Run

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

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Octreotide group and the comparison group should start out alike.

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

Fifty-four dropped out because of unresectable disease and six were excluded because of protocol violation; the remaining 218 were randomly assigned to the octreotide group (n = 111) or to the placebo group (n = 107).

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Chronic Disease, Elective Surgical Procedures, Morbidity, Octreotide, Pancreatic Fistula, Pancreatic Neoplasms and Pancreaticoduodenectomy.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Octreotide in 1992, patients in people with pancreatitis (after the acute phase).

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

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 1995 (Surgery), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Octreotide compound page, Pancreatitis (after the acute phase) research.