Association Between Lack of Blinding and Mortality Results in Critical Care Randomized Controlled Trials: A Meta-Epidemiological Study*
OBJECTIVES:
To investigate whether intervention effect estimates for mortality differ between blinded and nonblinded randomized controlled trials conducted in critical care. We used a meta-epidemiological approach, comparing effect estimates between blinded and nonblinded randomized controlled trials for the same research question.
DATA SOURCES:
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials evaluating a therapeutic intervention on mortality in critical care, published between January 2009 and March 2019 in high impact factor general medical or critical care journals and by Cochrane.
DATA EXTRACTION:
For each randomized controlled trial included in eligible meta-analyses, we evaluated whether the trial was blinded (i.e., double-blinded and/or reporting adequate methods) or not (i.e., open-label, single-blinded, or unclear). We collected risk of bias evaluated by the review authors and extracted trial results.
DATA SYNTHESIS:
Within each meta-analysis, we compared intervention effect estimates between blinded and nonblinded randomized controlled trials by using a ratio of odds ratio (
Source: Critical Care Medicine - Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Review Articles Source Type: research