BMJ  2004;328:286 (31 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7434.286-a

Letter

Quality of randomised controlled trials

Quality of trial methods is not good in all disciplines

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The paper by Soares et al is a useful reminder of the important distinction between quality of trial reporting and quality of trial methods.1

An established, motivated, and informed group such as the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group is likely not only to have well designed trials but to conduct them according to the protocol. Soares et al show that omission of important information in the trial reports of such a group can now be looked at more benevolently.

It is too large a leap of faith to extend this to other areas—for example, to small, often dated, suboptimal, underfunded trials. My experience in chasing up further information for trials in orthopaedics has yielded mixed and often disappointing results. Tracking down the trial investigator(s) has been difficult. Of those who could be found and replied, few were able to give completely satisfactory replies, sometimes because they no longer had . . . [Full text of this article]

Helen H G Handoll, senior lecturer

School of Health and Social Care, University of Teesside, Middlesbrough TS1 3BA h.handoll@ed.ac.uk


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Relevant Article

Bad reporting does not mean bad methods for randomised trials: observational study of randomised controlled trials performed by the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group
Heloisa P Soares, Stephanie Daniels, Ambuj Kumar, Mike Clarke, Charles Scott, Suzanne Swann, and Benjamin Djulbegovic
BMJ 2004 328: 22-24. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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