Outcome Selection and Methodological Quality of Major and Minor Shoulder Surgery Studies: A Scoping Review.

CONCLUSIONS: A wide range of outcome domains and outcome assessment tools are in common use in contemporary trials of patients undergoing elective surgery. Although some diversity is important to allow the assessment of patient populations that may have different goals, the large number of tools in common use may impair the ability of future meta-analyses to pool results effectively or even for systematic reviews to synthesize what is known. The limitations of methodological quality in RCTs may be improved by researchers following standard guidelines and considering the minimum clinically important differences in their trials to be of greater use to clinicians and their patients. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level I, therapeutic study. PMID: 30624315 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research - Category: Orthopaedics Authors: Tags: Clin Orthop Relat Res Source Type: research