Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences University of Guelph Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Disclosure(s):
Brad Hanna, DVM, MSc, PhD: No financial relationships to disclose
While many excellent clinical trials are published each year, those who study the quality of the medical literature tell us that an even greater number of flawed and misleading RCTs appear alongside them. In spite of this, the assumption that peer review essentially ensures accuracy is widespread. The result is that health professionals generally see little reason to learn how to check a clinical trial for scientific quality and end up believing both the good and the bad. The good news is that many of the errors are basic and easy to identify, and devoting a few minutes to RCT assessment can protect you from the least reliable information. Examples will be provided of key features that anyone can easily check in a published RCT.
Learning Objectives:
appreciate that only a minority of published clinical trials are free of serious errors, and that it is therefore important to perform at least a basic quality assessment before accepting the conclusions of an RCT.
identify several of the most common errors in RCTs.
