materials and methods in a randomized clinical trial, 60 patients, scheduled for cesarean section were randomly divided in to 2 groups gum-chewing group (n = 30) and control group (n = 30) postoperatively. the patients in the gum-chewing group postoperatively chewed sugar free gum 3 times daily each time for 1 hour until discharge. the patients' demographic characteristics, duration of sur...

OBJECTIVE The researchers sought to assess whether the widely used 1994 Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (HSSS) for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in MEDLINE could be improved in terms of sensitivity, precision, or parsimony. METHODS A gold standard of 1,347 RCT records and a comparison group of 2,400 non-trials were randomly selected from MEDLINE. Terms occurring in at least 1%...

The Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy welcomes submissions of well-reported randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with solid methodology based on the CONSORT statement (http://www.consort-statement.org). The Journal would be especially happy to publish RCTs in the area of antimicrobial chemotherapy if they address significant problems and look at measurable outcomes that matter to patients.

At more than 10 years after the paper by Hotopf and colleagues regarding pragmatic trials in psychiatry, the field has evolved and is evolving further. There have been many developments in our understanding of what pragmatism really means, and excellent examples of truly pragmatic trials in psychiatry are currently available. Funders have helped encourage more emphasis on the need for such stud...

This critical review examines efficacy of CILT in comparison to traditional treatment methods for adults with aphasia as well as the efficacy of modified versions of the original CILT protocol. Study designs include: individual series pre-post treatment (3), mixed randomized clinical trial (RCT) (2), mixed non-randomized clinical trial (NRCT) (2), mixed randomized block (1) designs. Overall, re...

Plyometric training (PT) enhances soccer performance, particularly vertical jump. However, the effectiveness of PT depends on various factors. A systematic search of the research literature was conducted for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) studying the effects of PT on countermovement jump (CMJ) height in soccer players. Ten studies were obtained through manual and electronic journal search...

H igh-quality randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the highest level of evidence in assessing the effectiveness of a treatment. It is random allocation that places RCTs in the highest level of evidence. The purpose of randomization is to create groups of patients that are comparable for known and unknown factors at the start of the trial so that any differences at the completion of the trial...

BACKGROUND Routinely collected health data (RCD) are increasingly used for randomized controlled trials (RCTs). This can provide three major benefits: increasing value through better feasibility (reducing costs, time, and resources), expanding the research agenda (performing trials for research questions otherwise not amenable to trials), and offering novel design and data collection options (e...

Quasi-abelian codes constitute an important class of linear codes containing theoretically and practically interesting codes such as quasi-cyclic codes, abelian codes, and cyclic codes. In particular, the sub-class consisting of 1-generator quasi-abelian codes contains large families of good codes. Based on the well-known decomposition of quasi-abelian codes, the characterization and enumeratio...

Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are increasingly popular in the social sciences, not only in medicine. We argue that the lay public, and sometimes researchers, put too much trust in RCTs over other methods of investigation. Contrary to frequent claims in the applied literature, randomization does not equalize everything other than the treatment in the treatment and control groups, it does n...