The CONSORT statement: revised recommendations for improving the quality of reports of parallel-group randomized trials. JAMA

To comprehend the results of a randomized, controlled trial (RCT), readers must understand its design, conduct, analysis, and inter-pretation. That goal can be achieved only through complete trans-parency from authors. Despite several decades of educational ef-forts, the reporting of RCTs needs improvement. Investigators and editors developed the original CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) statement to help authors improve reporting by using a checklist and flow diagram. The revised CONSORT statement presented in this paper incorporates new evidence and addresses some criticisms of the original statement. The checklist items pertain to the content of the Title, Ab-stract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. The revised checklist includes 22 items selected because empirical evidence indicates that not reporting the information is associated with biased estimates of treatment effect or because the information i