Analysis of the quantity and quality of published randomised controlled trials related to injury prevention from 2001 to 2010 in China

Abstract

Objective: To report the quantity and quality of published randomised controlled trails (RCT) on injury prevention in China.

Design: Bibliometric analysis.

Setting: China, 2001-2010.

Data sources: The published RCTs that were indexed by four domestic electronic databases and two international databases between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2010.

Main outcome measures: Numbers and proportions of published RCTs and those that did not report or specify the quality items recommended by Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Intervention V.5.0.0.

Results: Of 4834 publications of injury prevention, 25 RCTs with 55,431 participants were identified. One study had no full text. Twenty-three RCTs were published in Chinese language. All 25 studies chose education as the intervention, including 19 studies using education as single intervention and 6 studies using education as a part of combined intervention. Eighteen of 19 studies that used injury incidence rate as the primary outcome measure; 10 studies reported 24-59% reductions in injury incidence rate in the intervention group, and 8 studies reported 24-76% rate difference between the intervention group and the control group after the implementation of intervention. Only 1 study reported no significant difference. The other 6 studies only reported improvements in knowledge, attitude and practice/behaviour. None of 24 studies with full text included the information of 'allocation concealment', 'blinding' and 'free of early stopping bias'.

Conclusions: The value of 25 published RCTs cannot be determined due to the lack of quality information. More high-quality RCTs need to be performed in the future.

Keywords: Interventions.