Role of Hypothermia in Adult Cardiac Surgery Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Hypothermia, Meta-Analyses and Reporting Bias: Nothing New Under the Sun

“…This clearly is an empirical choice, and it is unlikely that a randomized trial on this type of patient ever could be performed. The results of Abbasciano et al 7 reiterated once more that both hypothermia and normothermia can be used safely and, so, provide relative freedom for the surgeons' subjective choice. While it may be hard to accept for some, it is nothing new for a discipline that generally considered in in between an art and a science.…”

“…9 The increase in quantity has not been paralleled by an increase in quality, with most works based on questionable evidence and poor methodology and addressing research questions of limited relevance. 10 Abbasciano et al 7 performed a rigorous and well-conducted meta-analysis (including a priori registration, clear, and detailed search, use of appropriate analytical methods as well as appropriate sensitivity analyses), but addressed a question that is largely resolved, and their findings mostly replicated the results of previous works.…”

“…In this issue of The Journal, Abbasciano et al 7 synthetized, once again, the published evidence on the topic. The authors pooled 48 relatively old trials (only 5/48 of studies were performed after the year 2000 [10%]), including 6990 patients randomized to receive hypothermic or normothermic CPB; the results were similar to previous meta-analyses and large-scale studies 5,8 showing no significant differences in any major explored outcomes between normothermia and hypothermia.…”