Efficacy and Effectiveness of Clinical Trials Applied to the Treatment of Obesity: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The multidisciplinary treatment of obesity (MTO) has been recognized as the standard intervention and the basis for complementary treatments. However, it is still not clear how effective MTO programs can be and it has become more difficult to determine because normally the conditions of the intervention are not clearly stated. Therefore, it is important to make it clear if one MTO program is characterized as an efficacy trial, conducted under ideal conditions, or as an effectiveness trial developed in real-world scenarios. In this sense, this systematic review aims to explore some information from MTO studies. This systematic review made a search for potential papers using PubMed and SciELO, in which the terms efficacy or effectiveness were presented. After applying all the inclusion/exclusion criteria, four trials were included (343 participants). All the studies had characteristics of effectiveness trials. They used three different main outcomes, which made comparisons difficult. In conclusion, this review shows that a very small number of MTO studies have been published using the terminology efficacy or effectiveness. These studies do not explore the terms in a way that could make important distinctions among these distinct clinical trial models. Keywords: Obesity; Treatment; Efficacy; Effectiveness.