Systematic Review: Adherence to Reporting Standards for Randomized Controlled Trials in Kidney Transplantation

ion and scoring of RCTs The data were collected from the selected articles by the investigator. RCTs were thoroughly reviewed, and the demographic data from each article were then recorded. The following information was collected from each article: Article name, Number of authors, Year of publication, Publishing journal, Impact factor of the journal, Country of origin of the article, Type of immunosuppression used (induction/maintenance), Singleor multi-centered. Each RCT was then scored based on the 25 items of the revised 2010 CONSORT guidelines. Of the contained 25 items in the guidelines, items 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17 and 18 are subdivided into ‘a’ and ‘b’. Each item in the CONSORT guideline was dichotomously rated (described or not described) to generate a CONSORT score. The items were scored as 1 if the requirement was met and 0 if it was not. However, the subdivided items were scored as 0.5 if the requirement was met and 0 if it was not. Thus, for subdivided items, if the requirements of both a and b were met, the item was scored as 1. Therefore, each study was scored out of a total possible score of 25. Two independent reviewers cross-checked the scoring of articles and any discrepancy between the two was resolved by the investigator.