Efficacy of furosemide for treatment of liver cirrhosis: A systematic review protocol of randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Previous clinical studies have reported that furosemide can be used to treat liver cirrhosis (LC) effectively. However, no study systematically explored this issue. This systematic review aims to investigate the efficacy and safety of furosemide for treatment of LC. METHODS: This study will be conducted through searching the following literature sources from their inception to February 28, 2019 without any language limitations: PUBMED, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus, OpenGrey, Cochrane Library, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database. In addition, reference lists of relevant reviews and websites of clinical trial registry will also be searched. Only randomized controlled trials of furosemide for treatment of LC will be included in this study. Two reviewers will independently select studies, collect data, and determine risk of bias. RevMan 5.3 software will be used to pool the data and to conduct meta-analysis if sufficient studies will be included with acceptable heterogeneity. RESULTS: This study will investigate the efficacy and safety of furosemide for LC by the assessment of primary and secondary outcomes. The primary outcome includes mortality rate. The secondary outcomes consist of response rate, overall survival, body weight, urinary volume, quality of life, as measured by any relevant scales, and adverse events. CONCLUSION: The results of this study may provide summarized evidence of furosemide for the treatment of LC. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: No individual patient data will be used in this study, thus no ethics approval is needed. The findings of this study will be published in peer-reviewed journals.