This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related letter  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Statistics and Research Methods  • Randomized Controlled Trial  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: The study of the eligibility criteria of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in high-impact general medical journals by Dr Van Spall and colleagues¹ addresses a crucial issue for everyday clinical practice. Patients are often located in an area of "therapeutic uncertainty," since they would theoretically not have been eligible for any of the treatments tested in the clinical trials. Evidence comes from studies in the fields of cardiology, oncology, and psychiatry.^2-4

It would be useful to know if the authors observed any independent association between the total number of exclusion criteria and positive results of an RCT. Such a correlation would cast more doubt on the transferability of RCT results to the target clinical population. In addition, in the multivariate analysis of the total number of exclusion criteria, the authors took into account the percentage of strongly, poorly, and potentially justified criteria; it would be more informative to . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Giorgio Costantino, MD; Elisa Ceriani, MD
celisa78@virgilio.it

Anna Maria Rusconi, MD; Nicola Montano, MD, PhD
Division of Internal Medicine II
Department of Clinical Sciences
L. Sacco Hospital
University of Milan
Milan, Italy

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED LETTER

Eligibility Criteria of Randomized Controlled Trials—Reply
Robert A. Fowler and Harriette G. C. Van Spall
JAMA. 2007;298(1):39-40.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT