Evidence-based Medicine - Quality of Clinical Trials

Quality of Clinical Trials

Evidence-based medicine attempts to objectively evaluate the quality of clinical research by critically assessing techniques reported by researchers in their publications.

• Trial design considerations. High-quality studies have clearly defined eligibility criteria and have minimal missing data.
• Generalizability considerations. Studies may only be applicable to narrowly defined patient populations and may not be generalizable to other clinical contexts.
• Follow-up. Sufficient time for defined outcomes to occur can influence the study outcomes and the statistical power of a study to detect differences between a treatment and control arm.
• Power. A mathematical calculation can determine if the number of patients is sufficient to detect a difference between treatment arms. A negative study may reflect a lack of benefit, or simply a lack of sufficient quantities of patients to detect a difference.