An Evaluation of the Quality of Clinical Trials in Anesthesia

Abstract

Although the quality of clinical trials in four major anesthesia journals has increased steadily during the past two decades, specific areas of trial methodology require further attention.

Reported quality of randomized controlled trials of physiotherapy interventions has improved over time

“…These results are consistent with other areas of health care, including psychiatry [21], palliative care [22], nursing [23], assisted reproduction [24], oncology [25], anesthesiology [26], ophthalmology [27], and drugs and surgery [17].…”

A systematic review of trends in the methodological quality of randomized controlled trials in various research fields

“…In Table 1 we present the available data from the studies that compared the methodological quality of RCTs in various research fields [3e37; Table is available on the journal's website at www.jclinepi.com]. The included studies reported on the methodological changes that were performed during the years in the RCTs of various biomedical fields, including rheumatology [10, 14,15,33,36], gastroenterologyehepatology [12, 23,24], orthopedics [6,9,17], anesthesiology [19,20,27], surgery [13,32], public health/ health services [29,30], intensive care [16,18] [26], psychiatry [25], radiology [35], complementary medicine [22], and general practice [31]. One study [34] examined meta-analyses conducted on the fields of gastroenterology, cardiology, obstetrics, and smoking cessation.…”

The Need for Large Clinical Studies in Perioperative Medicine

“…6,7 Further, there has been a tendency to believe the results of small perioperative clinical studies, especially when they demonstrate statistically significant results. This position is supported by the fact that perioperative guideline committees recommended ␤-blockers to patients undergoing noncardiac surgery for a decade based upon the results of small trials demonstrating implausibly large treatment effects.…”