Blinding, sham, and treatment effects in randomized controlled trials for back pain in 2000-2019: A review and meta-analytic approach.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Blinding aims to minimize biases from what participants and investigators know or believe. Randomized controlled trials, despite being the gold standard to evaluate treatment effect, do not generally assess the success of blinding. We investigated the extent of blinding in back pain trials and the associations between participant guesses and treatment effects.

Methods

We did a review with PubMed/OvidMedline, 2000-2019. Eligibility criteria were back pain trials with data available on treatment effect and participants' guess of treatment. For blinding, blinding index was used as chance-corrected measure of excessive correct guess (0 for random guess). For treatment effects, within- or between-arm effect sizes were used. Analyses of investigators' guess/blinding or

SUBMITTER: Freed B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8172416 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature