The CONSORTÂ (CONsolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) Statement was set up to help authors improve reporting of two-parallel design randomised control trials.It aims to enable readers to understand a trial’s design, conduct, analysis and interpretation, and to assess the validity of its results using a checklist and flow diagram. CONSORT 2010 is the newly updated version of the statement- all previous versions are now out-dated. You can find an overview of the statement and discussion of the changes here. Explanations and elaborations of the report can be found here.
Extensions of the CONSORT Statement have been developed for other types of study designs, interventions and data- and are specifically useful for CAM. These have not been recently updated , so it may be worth checking whether they could be usefully augmented by elements of good practice in the new statement. Another very relevant new paper proposes methods of addressing trial shortcomings in recruitment, ethics, patient preferences, and treatment comparisons:
Please note that this article is not free to access for CAMLIS members, but the link will work for those with subscription access through the NHS or other Athens accounts.
Return to News