OBJECTIVES To describe the characteristics of randomised controlled trials supported by the main non-commercial sources of funding in the United Kingdom between 1980 and 2002. DESIGN Descriptive survey. SETTING Randomised controlled trials funded by the Medical Research Council, NHS research and development programme, Department of Health, Chief Scientist Office in Scotland, and medical res...

BACKGROUND It is important that planned randomised trials are justified and placed in the context of the available evidence. The SPIRIT guidelines for reporting clinical trial protocols recommend that a recent and relevant systematic review should be included. The aim of this study was to assess the use of the existing evidence in order to justify trial conduct. METHODS Protocols of randomise...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether the amount of randomised clinical research on various medical conditions is related to the burden of disease and health needs of the local populations in sub-Saharan Africa. DESIGN Construction and analysis of comprehensive database of randomised controlled trials in sub-Saharan Africa based on Medline, the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, and several African...

with severe respiratory syncytial virus infection. Crit Care Med 1987;15:1051-4. 13 Gelfand EW, McCurdy D, Pandu Rao C, Middleton PJ. Ribavirin treatment of viral pneumonitis in severe combined immunodeficiency disease. Lancet 1983;ii:732-3. 14 McIntosh K, Kurachek SC, Cairns LM, Burns JC, Goodspeed B. Treatment of respiratory viral infection in an immunodeficient infant with ribavirin aerosol....

Background Clustering often occurs in individually randomised trials and is sometimes ignored when calculating sample sizes. Examples include practitioner effects in individually randomised trials with more than one practitioner or therapist effects from group interventions where clustering may be in one arm only. Additional levels of clustering may also occur in cluster randomised trials and e...

Although randomised controlled trials are the reference methodology to assess the effects of therapeutic interventions, for interventions that naturally occur in groups of individuals random allocation of participants may be inappropriate. In these cases, the unit of random allocation may be the group or cluster, rather than the individual. Clinical trials that randomly allocate groups or clust...

The Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) was introduced in 1996 to improve the methodological quality of published reports of randomised controlled trials. By doing a systematic review of randomised controlled trials on reproductive surgery, our group can demonstrate that the overall quality of the published reports of randomised studies on reproductive surgical interventions ha...

OBJECTIVES To estimate the proportion of psychiatric inpatients receiving primary interventions based on randomised controlled trials or systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials. DESIGN Retrospective survey. SETTING Acute adult general psychiatric ward. SUBJECTS All patients admitted to the ward during a 28 day period. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Primary interventions were classifie...

Objective To evaluate the effects of standalone versus clinically integrated teaching in evidence based medicine on various outcomes in postgraduates. Design Systematic review of randomised and non-randomised controlled trials and before and after comparison studies. Data sources Medline, Embase, ERIC, Cochrane Library, DARE, HTA database, Best Evidence, BEME, and SCI. Study selection 23 studie...