ArticleBMJ open2014
Assessment of the quality of reporting for treatment components in Cochrane reviews of acupuncture.
Article in BMJ open, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Relation of completeness of reporting of health research to journals' endorsement of reporting guidelines: systematic review.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2014Pooled it
- The quality of reporting in case reports of permanent neonatal diabetes mellitus: a cross-sectional study.BMC medical research methodology · 2024Article
- Overall Reporting Quality of Randomized Controlled Trials of Acupuncture for Knee Osteoarthritis: A Systematic Review.Journal of pain research · 2024Article
- Reporting and data-sharing level of acupuncture randomised controlled trials: a cross-sectional study protocol.BMJ open · 2023Article
- The collaboration and reporting quality of social welfare systematic reviews in the Campbell Collaboration online library.Health and quality of life outcomes · 2019Article
- Trends and predictors of biomedical research quality, 1990-2015: a meta-research study.BMJ open · 2019Review
- Reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses of acupuncture: the PRISMA for acupuncture checklist.BMC complementary and alternative medicine · 2019Article
- The quality of reporting in randomized controlled trials of acupuncture for knee osteoarthritis: A cross-sectional survey.PloS one · 2018Article
- Quality of reporting of randomised controlled trials in chiropractic using the CONSORT checklist.Chiropractic & manual therapies · 2016Article
- Article
- STRICTA: is it time to do more?BMC complementary and alternative medicine · 2015Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesHigh-quality reporting of treatment details can aid replication of study results in real-world clinical practice. The Standards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture (STRICTA) is a reporting guideline for key elements of acupuncture interventions in clinical trials. This study used STRICTA to investigate whether Cochrane reviews of acupuncture adequately report important treatment details.
designSystematic review
methodsCochrane reviews of acupuncture were identified from The Cochrane Library (issue 7, 2012). Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) included in the reviews and published after 2005 were obtained. Using STRICTA, we extracted acupuncture-related information from the Cochrane reviews and the RCTs. The characteristics of the included studies' table were the major source of intervention information from Cochrane reviews. Reporting quality of acupuncture interventions in Cochrane reviews was assessed and compared with the respective RCTs.
results25 Cochrane reviews of acupuncture and 92 RCTs met the selection criteria. Cochrane reviews were 16% less likely to report the acupuncture-related items of STRICTA than RCTs (risk ratio 0.84, 95% CI 0.79 to 0.88, I(2)=8%). Information was significantly better reported for 10 of the 15 treatment-group items of STRICTA in RCTs than in Cochrane reviews (p<0.05), while four items did so without statistical significance. One item related to practitioner background was significantly better reported in Cochrane reviews.
conclusionsReporting quality of treatment details in Cochrane reviews of acupuncture was insufficient with regard to STRICTA, even though such information was readily reported in RCTs. The overall quality of reporting of the RCTs, while better than the reviews, was also often suboptimal. Use of STRICTA guideline during the review process is recommended to adequately report the key treatment components in Cochrane reviews of acupuncture. The potential impact of STRICTA to the replicability and utilisation of reviews in future research and practice needs to be investigated.
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Registered trials
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