Abstract
The Standards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture (STRICTA) were published in five journals in 2001 and 2002. These guidelines, in the form of a checklist and explanations for use by authors and journal editors, were designed to improve reporting of acupuncture trials, particularly the interventions, thereby facilitating their interpretation and replication. Subsequent reviews of the application and impact of STRICTA have highlighted the value of STRICTA as well as scope for improvements and revision. To manage the revision process a collaboration between the STRICTA Group, the CONSORT Group, and the Chinese Cochrane Centre was developed in 2008. An expert panel with 47 participants was convened that provided electronic feedback on a revised draft of the checklist. At a subsequent face-to-face meeting in Freiburg, a group of 21 participants further revised the STRICTA checklist and planned dissemination. The new STRICTA checklist, which is an official extension of CONSORT, includes six items and 17 sub-items. These set out reporting guidelines for the acupuncture rationale, the details of needling, the treatment regimen, other components of treatment, the practitioner background, and the control or comparator interventions. In addition, and as part of this revision process, the explanations for each item have been elaborated, and examples of good reporting for each item are provided. In addition, the word "controlled" in STRICTA is replaced by "clinical," to indicate that STRICTA is applicable to a broad range of clinical evaluation designs, including uncontrolled outcome studies and case reports. It is intended that the revised STRICTA, in conjunction with both the main CONSORT Statement and extension for nonpharmacologic treatment, will raise the quality of reporting of clinical trials of acupuncture.
Highlights
The STRICTA (Standards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture) reporting guidelines, first published in 2001 [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9], were designed to improve the completeness and transparency of reporting of interventions in controlled trials of acupuncture, in order that such trials may be more accurately interpreted and readily replicated
There was agreement that STRICTA should continue to function as a stand-alone guideline for reporting acupuncture studies, and be an official extension of CONSORT for reporting randomized controlled trials
The group suggested that the revised STRICTA statement, when published, should be presented as embedded within the two-group parallel trial CONSORT checklist [10] and its non-pharmacological treatment extension checklist [14]
Summary
The STRICTA (Standards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture) reporting guidelines, first published in 2001 [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9], were designed to improve the completeness and transparency of reporting of interventions in controlled trials of acupuncture, in order that such trials may be more accurately interpreted and readily replicated. A survey of authors of clinical trials and systematic reviews was subsequently conducted to determine the usefulness of STRICTA in helping them write their reports [12]. A survey of 90 acupuncture trials was undertaken to assess whether use of the STRICTA checklist was associated with improved reporting over time [13]. The results of these initiatives led to conclusions that most STRICTA items were found to be necessary and easy to use, though some were seen as poorly reported, ambiguous or possibly redundant, and a number of suggestions were made for additional items.
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