ReviewSupportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer2012
Quality of the supportive and palliative oncology literature: a focused analysis on randomized controlled trials.
Review in Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Definition of supportive care: does the semantic matter?Current opinion in oncology · 2014Pooled it
- Methylphenidate versus placebo for fatigue in patients with advanced cancer: the MePFAC randomised controlled trial.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2025Trial
- Nutrition in palliative care at the end of life: Bibliometric and network analysis until 2024.Medicine · 2025Article
- Off-label drug use in palliative medicine: Delphi study for the consensus of evidence-based treatment recommendations.Palliative medicine · 2025Article
- Where are the values in evaluating palliative care? Learning from community-based palliative care provision.Palliative care and social practice · 2024Article
- Successful Strategies and Areas of Improvement-Lessons Learned from Design and Conduction of a Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial in Palliative Care, 'Palliative-D'.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Article
- The Impact of International Research Collaborations on the Citation Metrics and the Scientific Potential of South American Palliative Care Research: Bibliometric Analysis.Annals of global health · 2021Article
- Does the medical literature remain inadequately described despite having reporting guidelines for 21 years? - A systematic review of reviews: an update.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2018Review
- Guidance in author instructions of hematology and oncology journals: A cross sectional and longitudinal study.PloS one · 2017Article
- How far along the disease trajectory? An examination of the time-related patient characteristics in the palliative oncology literature.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2016Article
- Integrating palliative care into the trajectory of cancer care.Nature reviews. Clinical oncology · 2016Review
- Reality of evidence-based practice in palliative care.Cancer biology & medicine · 2015Review
- Which treatment is better? Ascertaining patient preferences with crossover randomized controlled trials.Journal of pain and symptom management · 2015Review
- Review
- Palliative care research: lessons learned by our team over the last 25 years.Palliative medicine · 2013Review
- Attrition rates, reasons, and predictive factors in supportive care and palliative oncology clinical trials.Cancer · 2013Article
- Reporting of funding sources and conflict of interest in the supportive and palliative oncology literature.Journal of pain and symptom management · 2012Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeThe quality of the supportive and palliative oncology literature is unclear. We examined five indicators of study quality in the supportive and palliative oncology literature.
methodsWe systematically searched MEDLINE, PsychInfo, EMBASE, ISI Web of Science, and CINAHL for original studies related to "palliative care" and "cancer" during the first 6 months of 2004 and 2009. For each study, we extracted the study size, the sample size calculation, and other study characteristics. We also determined the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) overall quality score, the key methodologic index, and the Jadad score for randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
resultsA total of 840 studies were included for sample size analysis, and 44 RCTs were identified for quality of reporting analysis. The median sample size was 70 for RCTs, 112 for cohort studies, and 200 for cross-sectional studies. Sample size calculations were most frequently reported in RCTs; however, 29/44 (66%) RCTs had no reporting, 5/44 (11%) had partial reporting, and 10/44 (23%) had full reporting. The median CONSORT overall quality score was 9 (interquartile range 7-11), key methodologic index was 0.50 (interquartile range 0-1.75), and Jadad score was 2 (interquartile range 1-3), suggesting low quality of reporting. We found no differences in the quality scores between 2004 and 2009. Key methodologic index score ≥ 2 was associated with the presence of funding from any source (10/25 vs. 1/19, P = 0.013) and funding from pharmaceutical industry (5/9 vs. 6/35, P = 0.03).
conclusionsWe identified deficiencies in the quality of supportive and palliative oncology RCTs.
Indexed as
Identifiers
21935717What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.