Figure 2

Blood loss with tetrastarch compared to albumin, gelatin or crystalloids. Units of blood loss were expressed in millilitres (ml), except for Hanart et al. [43] and Van der Linden et al. [52], where the units were millilitres per kilogram body weight, and Lee et al. [47], where no unit was indicated. The standardised mean difference (Std. mean difference) of the mean for the tetrastarch groups minus the mean for the albumin (A), gelatin (B) and crystalloid (C) groups was used as effect size. Fixed-effects models were applied to calculate a common effect estimate using the inverse-variance method (IV). SD, standard deviation; CI, Confidence interval.