Management of symptomatic cholelithiasis: a systematic review

Table 1 Characteristics of included studies by comparative arms: surgery, non-surgical, and ED pain management

Author, year	Comparison	Number of sites	Study design	Sample size	Follow-up time
Vetrhus, 2002 [16], Vetrhus 2004 [15], and Schmidt, 2011 [19]^a	Surgery vs. observation	Multiple	Randomized	137	5 years [15, 16] 14 years [19]
Ahmed, 2000 [14]	Surgery vs. lithotripsy	Single	Randomized	144	5 years
Salman, 2005 [17]	Urgent vs. elective surgery	Single	Randomized	75	Not specified
Anwar, 2008 [18]^b	Urgent vs. elective surgery	Single	Observational	96	Not specified
Van Dijk, 2019 [20]^c	Surgeon discretion vs. pre-specified criteria	Multiple	Randomized	1067	1 year
Petroni, 2001 [21]	UDCA^d vs. UDCA + bile salts	Multiple	Randomized	158	2 years
Venneman, 2006 [22]	UDCA vs. placebo	Multiple	Randomized	177	Varied^e
Wong, 2019 [25]	Electro-acupuncture vs. observation	n/a	Randomized	46	Not specified
Malesci, 2003 [23]	ED pain management^e	Single	Randomized	14	48h
Antevil, 2004 [24]	ED pain management^f	Single	Randomized	38	20 min

^aStudies looked at same population, examined different outcomes at different timepoints
^bAnwar, 2008 defined urgent cholecystectomy as early/same-day
^cSurgeon discretion defined as operation based on standard care left to the discretion of the surgeon; restrictive strategy used the fulfillment of five pre-specified criteria as indication for operation
^dUDCA Ursodeoxycholic acid
^eFollowed until they received surgery or for 12 months from start of treatment if refused surgery
^eHyoscine-N-butyl bromide vs. Loxiglumide
^fGlycopyrrolate vs. placebo

ISSN: 2046-4053