3.3.9 Indirectness
Directness refers to the extent to which the populations, intervention, comparisons and outcome measures are similar to those defined in the inclusion criteria for the reviews. Indirectness is important when these differences are expected to contribute to a difference in effect size, or may affect the balance of harms and benefits considered for an intervention. The GDG agreed to permit indirect evidence for the treatment of patients with gastric varices as long as patients with gastric varices were not explicitly excluded (i.e. studies with mixed populations of patients with either oesophageal or gastric varices or both).