3.2 Study selection
Two reviewers (F.O. - A.B.) independently performed the initial
screening process to recognize all citations of potential acceptability.
The inclusion criteria in our study consisted of:
randomized clinical trials (RCTs) study design;
statin-naive patients;
Rosuvastatin or Atorvastatin started no more than 21 days before cardiac
surgery;
total study participants ≥ 50;
studies published starting from January 2006;
Original untranslated studies that are written in English language only;
Age ≥ 18 years old;
For definitive eligibility, full-text papers of recognized abstracts
that were pertinent to our inclusion criteria were evaluated. The
excluded papers were non-randomized clinical trials, cohort studies,
case reports, letters, conference abstracts, and editorials. The Kappa
statistic was utilized to evaluate the inter-rater reliability of the
two reviewers 21 .