e-discussion on CONSORT STATEMENT 2010

[Guest guest]

Dear members,

Very warm greetings and Good morning to all of you.

First of all I wish to express my gratitude to

our respected Thawani sir, who has given me this great opportunity to moderate

a session in Netrum. We are really fortunate to work under him.

Now I would like to introduce myself.

I, Dr Rangeel Singh Raina, has been working as Assistant Professor in the Deptt.

Of Pharmacology of VCSGGMSRI, Srinagar,

Pauri- Garhwal, Uttarakhand.

I am here with

you for e-discussion on CONSORT STATEMENT 2010, a tool for clear,

complete and transparent reporting of randomized trials and I hope that it

will be a useful and informative discussion. Today I will start this session

with brief introduction and background of CONSORT STATEMENT.

CONSORT

(CONSOLIDATED STANDARDS OF REPORTING TRIALS

Introduction

It is

actually a Tool for transparent reporting of randomized controlled trial.

RCTs should be

appropriately designed, conducted and reported. Reporting should be complete, clear and

transparent on its methodology and results.

Because complete and

transparent reporting of trials is crucial to ensure the decisions about health

care.

Unfortunately, most of authors

neglected this methodology and inadequately reported. That lack of appropriate

reporting fuelled the development of original CONSORT statement in 1996

and its revision five years later in 2001.

CONSORT, which

stands for Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials, encompasses various

initiatives developed by the CONSORT Group to alleviate the problems arising

from inadequate reporting of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

Although those statements

improved the reporting quality for some RCTs, many trial reports still remained

inadequate. Therefore an expert meeting in January 2007 was organised

and statement has been further revised and is published as the CONSORT 2010

Statement.

The main product of consort is

the CONSORT statement, which is an

evidence-based, minimum set of recommendations for reporting RCTs. It mainly includes

a checklist to help authors to write reports of randomized controlled trials so

that others can judge the reliability and validity of the results.

BACKGROUND

Need of proper and appropriate

reporting of RCTs was needed in mid -1990s. Then researchers had observed for long time

that authors reported such trials poorly. It emerged the idea of developing

reporting guidelines.

Schulz, distinguished

scientist and Vice President of Family Health International USA,

with his colleague had taken initiation to develop CONSORT to improve the quality of reporting of RCTs.

It was first published in 1996 and revised in 2001 .Further methodological

research on similar topics reinforced earlier findings and fed into the

revision of CONSORT 2010 Statement. Users of the guideline are strongly recommended to refer to this most

up-to-date version while writing or interpreting reports of clinical trials.

Regular monitoring of literature is being done by

CONSORT group and such evidence based information are utilised for update of

CONSORT statement. (>700 studies comprise the consort database. website-http://www.consort-statement.org)

Over time, many leading medical journals (>400)

and major international editorial groups have endorsed the CONSORT 2010

statement.