Well-conducted randomized clinical trials (RCT) are essential for the objective assessment of the value of new diagnostic or therapeutic medical interventions. They also will give us information about the effect of the intervention on cost and quality of life. Although the RCT was introduced 50 years ago, the requirements to ensure the best possible quality are continuously scrutinized.1–4 That...

Eighty patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for social phobia were randomly assigned to 10 weeks of residential cognitive therapy (RCT) or residential interpersonal therapy (RIPT). Subjects were assessed at pretreatment, midtreatment, posttreatment, and 1 year after end of treatment. The patients reported chronic, highly comorbid social phobia. Most had tried other treatments without success. Exist...

The beneficial effects of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) on cardiovascular disease have been studied extensively. However, it remains unclear to what extent n-3 PUFAs may impact Reverse Cholesterol Transport (RCT). RCT describes a mechanism by which excess cholesterol from peripheral tissues is transported to the liver for hepatobiliary excretion, thereby inhibiting foam cell f...

Most health care initiatives are evaluated using observational study designs in lieu of randomized controlled trials (RCT) due primarily to resource limitations. However, although observational studies are less expensive to implement and evaluate, they are also more problematic in determining causality than the RCT. This trade off is most apparent in the initial planning stage of program develo...

Endovascular coiling has become the primary treatment modality for the treatment of intracranial ruptured aneurysms in many centers. A multicenter randomized controlled trial (RCT), ISAT study, has demonstrated that endovascular coiling of ruptured intracranial aneurysms has benefits over surgical clipping in those patients suitable for either treatment. Because RCT comparing conservative manag...

The upcoming upgrades to the Large Hadron Collider – the world’s largest particle accelerator – and its associated experiments will require a significant redesign of its triggering electronics, including the implementation of new algorithms in the Regional Calorimeter Trigger (RCT). In this project, I intend to explore two aspects of the implementation of the RCT upgrade: (1) The algorithmic tr...

OBJECTIVE We examined the effect of ezetimibe, a cholesterol absorption (CA) inhibitor, and genetic determinants of CA on reverse cholesterol transport (RCT) from subcutaneously injected macrophages using a new dual isotope label technique. METHODS AND RESULTS Treatment of C57BL/6J mice with ezetimibe decreased dietary CA by 86% and increased RCT from peripheral tissue macrophages (PTM) by 6-...

BACKGROUND More than 200,000 persons died in 2002 in Germany as a consequence of cancer diseases. Cancer (ICD-9: 140-208, ICD-10: C00-C97) accounted for 28% of all male deaths and for 22% of all female deaths. Cancer treatment consists on surgery, radio- and chemotherapy. During chemotherapy patients may experience a wide variety of toxic effects (including life-threatening toxicity) which requ...

The current tendency is to provide post-approval evidence from separate, often larger and less well controlled trials. Typical examples of these are pragmatic trials (randomisation, little/no control), purely prospective observational trials (no randomisation, no control) and use of historic controls. #3 New study design: Mixed RCT (cont.) In a Mixed RCT patients would be selected and randomise...

In this section of the series on orthodontic research we intend to give a brief outline of how to carry out a randomized controlled trial (RCT). The RCT is one of the most simple and powerful research tools in which people are allocated at random to receive one of several clinical interventions. We hope that this will not only provide information to anyone who is aiming to carry out research of...