Assessment of quality of reporting of Helicobacter pylori related randomized controlled trials: a focus on highly ranked gastroenterology journals

Background: Randomized controlled trials are often considered as the gold standard for measuring the effectiveness of an intervention. However, inappropriate or poor reporting in randomized controlled trials can produce biased estimates of treatment effects. Clinical trials that do not use the CONSORT statement for reporting their findings will have limited value to the clinicians and researchers due to the risk of bias in their results. This review aims to assess the quality of reporting of randomized controlled trials in Helicobacter pylori associated infections by using the CONSORT 2010 checklist.

Methods: All issues of 20 highly ranked gastroenterology journals published from Jan 2011 up to November 2017 were searched. Searches were conducted in November 2017. Randomized controlled trials reporting on Helicobacter pylori associated infections were included in the review.

Results: 21 randomized controlled trials published in gastroenterology journals were included in the study. All included studies adequately reported (100%) on items including description of interventions, outcomes assessed, total number of participants analysed, baseline characteristics and results of outcome assessed. However, items including blinding and mechanism of allocation concealment were reported in only 12 randomized controlled trials (50%).The maximum and minimum scores and percentage of compliance of included randomised controlled trials were 24 (100%) and 15 (62.5%) respectively.

Conclusions: The finding of this review suggests that the overall quality of reporting in the included randomized controlled trials was adequate. However, items including trial design, trial registration and protocol and sample size calculations should be reported adequately in the future randomized controlled trials to improve the quality of reporting and replicability of clinical trials.