Original Articles: Reporting Upper Extremity Outcome MeasuresThe quality of reporting and outcome measures in randomized clinical trials related to upper-extremity disorders1 ☆,
Section snippets
Materials and methods
Studies were included if they were randomized trials comparing treatment methods for upper-extremity disorders among an adult patient population and were published from 1992 through 2002 in one of the following 4 journals: Journal of Hand Surgery (American volume), Journal of Hand Surgery (British and European volume), Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American volume), and Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (British volume). Of these 4 journals only Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American
Results
The review of all abstracts of articles published in the 4 journals during the 11-year period identified 88 potentially eligible articles reporting RCTs related to the treatment of upper-extremity disorders. The advanced PubMed search identified 7 additional articles. Of these 95 articles 3 were excluded from further assessment because the terms “randomized,” “random,” or “randomly” were not mentioned in the description of the study except in the abstract.
Of the 92 articles included Journal of
Discussion
This systematic assessment revealed that only 43% of the studies reported to be RCTs that were related to treatment of upper-extremity disorders truly were randomized studies, based on the description of the randomization method. Twenty-three percent of the studies were described as randomized but the randomization method described was inappropriate. These studies should therefore not have been considered randomized studies. The randomization method was not described in 34% of the studies,
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Supported by grants from the Vardal Foundation and the Skane County Council.
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