Evidence map›Paper›PMID 30267666›Full record

ArticleArchives of physical medicine and rehabilitation2019

The Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System: Implications for Improvements in Research Design, Reporting, Replication, and Synthesis.

Jarrad H Van Stan, Marcel P Dijkers, John Whyte, Tessa Hart, Lyn S Turkstra, Jeanne M Zanca, Christine Chen

Registry-linked trialAbstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT07680777 (Perioperative Rehabilitation for Individuals Undergoing Inguinal Hernia Repair), which is not on this map. Cited by 86 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
86citing papers in PubMed, 6 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

NCT07680777 nanot yet recruitingnot on this mapstarted 2026, after this paper: background citation

Perioperative Rehabilitation for Individuals Undergoing Inguinal Hernia Repair: A Randomized Controlled Trial

TypeinterventionalSponsorUniversity of AlbertaRan2026 to 2027Enrolled98ConditionsInguinal HerniaArmsRehabilitation
3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

86 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

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26 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors.

Jarrad H Van StanHarvard Medical School, Boston, MA; Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation, Boston, MA; Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions, Charlestown, MA. Electronic address: jvanstan@mgh.harvard.edu.
Marcel P DijkersWayne State University, Detroit, MI; Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY.
John WhyteMoss Rehabilitation Research Institute, Elkins Park, PA.
Tessa HartMoss Rehabilitation Research Institute, Elkins Park, PA.
Lyn S TurkstraMcMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Jeanne M ZancaKessler Foundation, West Orange, NJ.
Christine ChenTexas Women's University, Denton, TX.

Funding

Measuring what happens in voice therapy: refinement and testing of a voice therapy taxonomyR21DC016124 · NIDCD · MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL · PI VAN STAN, JARRAD · 2017 to 2021
$555k
NIDCD NIH HHS R21 DC016124
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Despite significant advances in measuring the outcomes of rehabilitation interventions, little progress has been made in specifying the therapeutic ingredients and processes that cause measured changes in patient functioning. The general approach to better clarifying the process of treatment has been to develop reporting checklists and guidelines that increase the amount of detail reported. However, without a framework instructing researchers in how to describe their treatment protocols in a manner useful to or even interpretable by others, requests for more detail will fail to improve our understanding of the therapeutic process. In this article, we describe how the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System (RTSS) provides a theoretical framework that can improve research intervention reporting and enable testing and refinement of a protocol's underlying treatment theories. The RTSS framework provides guidance for researchers to explicitly state their hypothesized active ingredients and targets of treatment as well as for how the individual ingredients in their doses directly affect the treatment targets. We explain how theory-based treatment specification has advantages over checklist approaches for intervention design, reporting, replication, and synthesis of evidence in rehabilitation research. A complex rehabilitation intervention is used as a concrete example of the differences between an RTSS-based specification and the Template for Intervention Description and Replication checklist. The RTSS's potential to advance the rehabilitation field can be empirically tested through efforts to use the framework with existing and newly developed treatment protocols.

Indexed as

Outcome Assessment, Health CarePatient Care PlanningPhysical and Rehabilitation MedicineResearch DesignHumansMeta-analysis as topicMethodsOutcome assessment (health care)RehabilitationTherapeuticsTranslational medical research

Identifiers

PMID30267666
PMCPMC6452635

What OpenQuestion holds

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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.