The Quality and Reporting of Randomized Trials in Cardiothoracic Physical Therapy Could Be Substantially Improved

Abstract

BACKGROUND: While the number of reports of randomized controlled trials in physical therapy has increased substantially in the last decades, the quality and reporting of randomized trials have never been systematically investigated in the subdiscipline of cardiothoracic physical therapy. The primary aim was to determine the methodological quality and completeness of reporting of cardiothoracic physical therapy trials. Secondary aims were to investigate the range of clinical conditions investigated in these trials and the degree of association between trial characteristics and quality. METHODS: All reports of randomized trials indexed on the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) and coded as being relevant to cardiothoracic physical therapy were surveyed. PEDro scale individual items and total score were downloaded, and some characteristics included in the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement were extracted for each trial report. RESULTS: The mean ؎ SD total PEDro score for the 2,970 included reports of cardiothoracic trials was 4.7 ؎ 1.4, with 27% being of moderate to high quality. The clinical conditions studied included chronic lung diseases (32% of the trials), cardiac diseases (20%), cardiovascular surgical conditions (5%), sleep disorders (5%), peripheral vascular disease (4%), acute lung disease (4%), critical illness (3%), and other surgical conditions (3%). The multivariate linear regression analysis revealed that endorsement of the CONSORT statement by the publishing journal, time since publication, evidence of trial registration, sources of funding, description of the sample size calculation, and identification of the primary outcome(s) had associations with the total PEDro score. CONCLUSIONS: There is great potential to improve the quality of the conduct and reporting of trials evaluating the effects of cardiothoracic physical therapy.

Funding is related to the quality, conduct, and reporting of trial reports in musculoskeletal physical therapy: A survey of 210 published trials

“…Our study is comparable to other research in physical therapy by showing the positive association between funding and total PEDro score in cardiothoracic physical therapy (Geha et al, 2013). The cardiothoracic subdiscipline has the second largest quanta of evidence indexed in PEDro and accounts for 20% of the trials (Moseley, Elkins, Janer-Duncan, and Hush, 2014).…”

“…Language of publication, time since publication and subdiscipline of physical therapy have all been shown in previous research to be associated with trial quality (Geha et al, 2013;Moseley, Elkins, Janer-Duncan, and Hush, 2014;Moseley et al, 2011). These variables were not included as methodological quality parameters because only trial reports in musculoskeletal physical therapy published in the last three years in English were included in this study.…”

“…The association between funding and quality has only been evaluated for cardiothoracic physical therapy. In trial reports for cardiothoracic physical therapy, funding was associated with a 0.14-point increase in total Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) score (0-10) (Geha et al, 2013). This small association might be explained by the possible limited role of the industry in physical therapy research compared to medical or surgical research.…”

Randomised controlled trials for complex physiotherapy interventions are perfectly possible

“…The real problem on the issue of evidence-based care in all professions is that a large proportion of the existing trials were poorly designed,5 not well-planned (in terms of the research question) and underpowered. In December 2017, there were more than 30 000 RCTs relevant to physiotherapy interventions indexed within the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro).…”

Mindestanforderungen an qualitativ hochwertige Berichte medizinischer Forschungsergebnisse

“…Ursprüng-lich für die Publikation von 2 Parallelgruppen entwickelt, wurden CONSORTErweiterungen für weitere randomisierte Studiendesigns wie z. B. Cluster-randomisierte Studien [3], "Non-inferiority"-und Äquivalenzstudien [13], aber auch Vorgaben für die Publikation von Abstracts [8] Fachzeitschriften das Befolgen des CON-SORT-Statements zunehmend befürwor-ten, zeigten neuere Untersuchungen, dass die Qualität des Berichtens von medizinischen Studien weiterhin verbesserungsbedürftig ist [6,7,14]. Untersuchungen der Studienberichterstattung in den TopAnästhesie-und Top-IntensivmedizinJournals ergaben eine nur ca.…”