OBJECTIVE To examine the effect of acupressure on Raynaud's phenomenon (RP) in a randomized controlled clinical trial (RCT) and to evaluate the difficulties of conducting a RP RCT. METHODS A pilot single center RCT of acupressure vs. targeted patient education was conducted for the treatment of RP. Patients with either primary (N = 15) or secondary (N = 8) RP were randomized in an 8-week stud...

BACKGROUND The Norwegian Directorate of Health recommends that Healthy Life Centres (HLCs) be established in primary health care to support behaviour change and reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases. The aim of the present study protocol is to present the rationale, design and methods of a combined pragmatic randomized controlled trial (RCT) and longitudinal cohort study of the effects o...

OBJECTIVES Although observational studies provide useful descriptive and correlative information, their role in the evaluation of medical interventions remains contentious. There has been no systematic evaluation of authors' attitudes toward their own nonrandomized studies and how often they recommend specific medical practices. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING We reviewed all original articles of no...

BACKGROUND A significant proportion of trial participants respond to placebos for a variety of conditions. Despite the common conduct of these trials and the strong emphasis placed on informed consent, very little is known about informing participants about their individual treatment allocation at trial closure. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by exploring treatment belief...

I highly admire the article “Abdelfattah LE, Bastawy AMA, Fahmy MSED. Manual removal versus spontaneous delivery of placenta at caesarean section: a randomized controlled trial in International journal reproduction, contraception, obstetrics and gynecology”.1 Really there is dearth control trials (RCTs) on this issue managing third stage labour during section, making obstetricians to continue p...

BACKGROUND Physicians often administer corticosteroids for the treatment of fluid and vasoactive infusion dependent pediatric shock. This use of corticosteroids is controversial, however, and has never been studied in a pediatric randomized controlled trial (RCT). This pilot trial will determine the feasibility of a larger RCT on the role of corticosteroids in pediatric shock. METHODS/DESIGN ...

The randomized controlled trial (RCT) has become the most widely accepted research design for testing the efficacy of health care interventions. The purposes of this paper are to (a) introduce the essential elements of RCTs, and (b) discuss some of the special problems faced by occupational therapists in conducting and interpreting RCTs. The CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) ...

Occupational health researchers regularly conduct evaluative intervention research for which a randomized controlled trial (RCT) may not be the most appropriate design (eg, effects of policy measures, organizational interventions on work schedules). This article demonstrates the appropriateness of alternative designs for the evaluation of occupational health interventions, which permit causal i...

BACKGROUND The randomized, controlled trial (RCT) is the "gold standard" for establishing the effect of any intervention. This approach, however, is often not feasible with rare diseases such as cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. METHODS We review the principles of evidence-based medicine to see which are particularly pertinent to the study of rare diseases. RESULTS When an RCT is not feasible, att...