Bias | Author's judgement | Support for judgement |
Confounding |
Moderate |
Comment: The confounders of interest (age, sex, comorbidities, severity) were controlled for in the propensity score model |
Selection of participants into the study |
Serious |
Patients were excluded if they had outcomes before 48 hours. Start of follow up is 48 hours since admission. Start of intervention is 24 hours since admission. Unclear if patients who used famotidine before admission were included or not. |
Intervention classification |
Low |
Comment: data were collected from clinic records. Treatment groups were classified using clearly defined criteria. |
Deviation from intended intervention |
NI |
Comment: The information reported is inadequate to assess whether there are deviations from the intended intervention beyond what would be expected in usual practice. |
Missing data |
Low |
No missing data |
Measurements of outcomes |
Low |
Comment: WHO clinical improvement scale 7 or above is an observer-reported outcome involving clinical decision-making. It could theoretically have been influenced by knowledge of the intervention received by the participants, but this is unlikely in the pandemic context. Risk assessed to be low for the outcomes: WHO clinical improvement scale 7 or above. |
Selection of the reported results |
Moderate |
No protocol available, the mortality analysis was presented only subgroup |