Negative Results of Randomized Clinical Trials Published in the Surgical Literature
Open Access
- 1 July 2001
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Medical Association (AMA) in Archives of Surgery
- Vol. 136 (7) , 796-800
- https://doi.org/10.1001/archsurg.136.7.796
Abstract
CLINICAL decisions should be based on the critical appraisal of relevant literature coupled with the experience and judgment of the surgeon. The randomized controlled clinical trial (RCT) is the definitive method to investigate the relative efficacy of 2 or more interventions of interest. However, RCTs comprise only 3% to 7% of research publications in surgical journals.1,2,4 Previous efforts aimed at evaluating the quality of surgical RCTs have shown that many of them contain errors in methodology.1,3,5Keywords
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