Quality Assessment of Randomized Controlled Clinical Trials Indexed in PubMed Using CONSORT Statement

Most physicians consider abstracts to give a general idea about the full text of an article. Abstracts, as summative and informative parts, contain main information of papers. They also point out the content of papers to readers. The importance of abstracts leads journals to be stricter about their structure and content. This study aimed to assess the abstracts of randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) indexed in PubMed according to Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) checklist. In this descriptive cross-sectional study, we assessed all 314 abstracts of RCTs affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences (n = 249) and Iran University of Medical Sciences (n = 65) indexed in PubMed up to the end of 2010. Data was presented in frequency tables and bar charts using SPSS16. Among the items considered in the checklist, only the intervention used in the 2 groups has been completely presented in the abstracts. Other items about the method of randomization, type and design of the RCT, and the number of people involved in the analysis have been reported weakly. The drug interventions were the most common reported interventions (68.2%). In addition, double-blind was the most common blinding method. RCTs were not presented in high quality reports. Therefore, training courses about qualitative reporting of RCT results seem necessary for medical researchers. In addition, editors of medical journals must provide necessary reporting guidelines for authors and reviewers to improve the quality of published researches.