65 Review Inflammatory Mediators in Animal Burn Models Figure 1. PRISMA flowchart showing study identification, screening and inclusion. Representation of the steps to select relevant studies for the systematic review and meta-analyses [18]. Study quality and risk of bias assessment Underreporting in studies complicated the assessment of overall study quality drastically. Only 43.7% of the studies in this systematic review reported the use of animal randomization prior to burn induction (Figure 2A). The vast majority of studies (98.1%) did not report the use of any form of blinding during experimentation or analysis. Moreover, a conflict-of-interest statement was present in only 45.1% of the studies. In 25 randomly selected studies that used uninjured controls the risk of bias (RoB) was unclear for at least 4 of the 10 scored items owing to underreporting (Figure 2B). A considerably 3
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