Improving the quality of reporting randomized controlled trials in cardiothoracic surgery: The way forward

Abstract

The quality of reporting randomized controlled trials in cardiothoracic surgery is suboptimal. Endorsement of the Consolidated Standards for Reporting of Trials statement by the cardiothoracic journals may improve the quality of reporting.

Risk of bias and magnitude of effect in orthodontic randomized controlled trials: a meta-epidemiological review

“…Moreover, blinding of outcome assessors was frequently judged to be of high RoB whereas random sequence generation was frequently judged to be of low RoB. These findings underscore not only the compromised internal validity of RCTs in orthodontic research, but also the apparent weaknesses in trial reporting which is not new to biomedical literature (5,(19)(20)(21)(22)(23). Suboptimal reporting and deficient adherence to reporting guidelines of medical and dental RCTs remains a problem, despite the widespread adoption of the Consolidated Standards for Reporting of Trials statement by journals and editorial policies (3,5,24).…”

Mislabeling Controlled Clinical Trials (CCTs) as “Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs)” in Dental Specialty Journals

“…[1][2][3][4][5] Among the various study designs, the randomized clinical trial is considered the design that has the potential to provide the highest quality evidence 1 ; however, there is substantial evidence in the biomedical literature, including dentistry, that randomization and RCT quality, in general, is suboptimal and that often clinical trials described as RCTs are not really RCTs. 4,5,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] The term randomized clinical/controlled trial has become more common during the past decade in the titles of articles published in dental journals; however, no study exists that assesses whether studies representing the major dental specialties and published as RCTs are truly RCTs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which studies published in major dental journals using the term RCTs in the title are possibly mislabeled, based on their reporting, and to identify possible associations between journal type and other publication characteristics, such as the involvement of a statistician, the time since publication, the number of authors, the origin of the study, and the parties involved in the study (single or multicenter), on correct classification.…”

An assessment of quality characteristics of randomised control trials published in dental journals

“…[4][5][6][7] In an effort to standardise and guide researchers in conducting and reporting clinical trials the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) guidelines have been developed which consist of 25 items that cover all key aspects of clinical trials and set standards on how to design, conduct, analyse and report such studies. 1 Numerous studies in the past have assessed quality of randomised controlled trials using various methods, 3,4,[8][9][10][11] and recently studies have evaluated the RCTs' quality using the CONSORT guidelines.…”