Abstract
The validity of studies that assess the effectiveness of an intervention (EoI) depends on variables such as the type of study design, the quality of their methodology, and the participants enrolled. Five leading veterinary journals and 5 leading human medical journals were hand-searched for EoI studies for the year 2013. We assessed (1) the prevalence of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) among EoI studies, (2) the type of participants enrolled, and (3) the methodological quality of the selected studies. Of 1707 eligible articles, 590 were EoI articles and 435 RCTs. Random allocation to the intervention was performed in 52% (114/219; 95%CI:45.2–58.8%) of veterinary EoI articles, against 87% (321/371; 82.5–89.7%) of human EoI articles (adjusted OR:9.2; 3.4–24.8). Veterinary RCTs were smaller (median: 26 animals versus 465 humans) and less likely to enroll real patients, compared with human RCTs (OR:331; 45–2441). Only 2% of the veterinary RCTs, versus 77% of the human RCTs, reported power calculations, primary outcomes, random sequence generation, allocation concealment and estimation methods. Currently, internal and external validity of veterinary EoI studies is limited compared to human medical ones. To address these issues, veterinary interventional research needs to improve its methodology, increase the number of published RCTs and enroll real clinical patients.
Highlights
IntroductionThe trustworthiness and applicability of outcomes of studies that assess the effectiveness of an intervention (EoI) strongly depend on the (1) choice of the research design, (2) the methodological quality, and (3) the characteristics of the included population (Schulz et al, 1995; Moinpour et al, 2000; Moher et al, 2010)
Evaluation of medical interventions may be biased by inferential reasoning
Number of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that included real patients: We evaluated if RCTs involved real clinical patients or non-patients
Summary
The trustworthiness and applicability of outcomes of studies that assess the effectiveness of an intervention (EoI) strongly depend on the (1) choice of the research design, (2) the methodological quality, and (3) the characteristics of the included population (Schulz et al, 1995; Moinpour et al, 2000; Moher et al, 2010). Studies that assessed the prevalence of RCTs among EoI studies were not identified in the published veterinary literature
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