Title: Quality Assessment for Randomized Controlled Trials of Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs in the Treatment of Acute Appear Respiratory Infection
Abstract:Objective:To assess the quality of the randomized controlled trials on Chinese medicinal herbs in the treatment of acute upper respiratory infcction.Method:To hand search 83 kinds of Chinese medical j...Objective:To assess the quality of the randomized controlled trials on Chinese medicinal herbs in the treatment of acute upper respiratory infcction.Method:To hand search 83 kinds of Chinese medical journals(the earliest:1978;the latest:2002).Inclusion criteria:trials which were randomized controlled.According to the evaluation criterion on design quality of RCT,to assess all of the trials.To design a table including diagnosis standard,baseline,random allocation,blind trials,intention-to-treat,statistics and conclusion.To figure out the percentage of all respects respectively.And then have a conclusion.Result:There were 1929 trials on Chinese medicinal herbs in the treatment of acute upper respiratory infection,among them,there were 263 randomized controlled trials.None mentioned the allocation concealment.The randomization was reported in 24 trials(9 12%).The baseline was described in 199 trials(75 67%).The diagnosis standard and inclusion criteria were mentioned in 250 trials(95 06%).The excluding criteria was mentioned in 42 trials(15 97%).None mentioned the estimation in sample size.Withdrawal occurred in 4 trials(1 52%),and there was no intention to treat in 2 of them.In 147 trails there was no description on statical method adopted(55 89%).In 27 trials(10 27%)there were mistakes in the statistical withod.The table was used correctly in 180 trials(68 44%).Conclusion:There were a lot of trials on Chinese medical herbs in the treatment of acute upper respiratory infection,but only a few of them were randomized controlled trials,and it was necessary to improve the quality of them.The main problems are as follows:1 most of the trials didn't describe the randomization;2 none used the allocation concealment;3 none estimated the sample size;4 most of the reseatchers couldn't tell the random allocation and the random sampling clearly;5 in more than half of the trials,the statistics was not described clearly;6 the usage of statistic method was wrong in many trials;and 7 and only a few trials used blind trials in investigation.The series of problems indicated that it is necessary to improve the quality of clinical tests used in the study of chinese medicinal herbs.Chinese medicinal herds in clinical tests.Read More
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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