%0 Journal Article
%T CONSORT 2010 Statement: updated guidelines for reporting parallel group randomised trials
%A Kenneth F Schulz
%A Douglas G Altman
%A David Moher
%A the CONSORT Group
%J BMC Medicine
%D 2010
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1741-7015-8-18
%X To encourage dissemination of the CONSORT 2010 Statement, this article is freely accessible on bmj.com and will also be published in the Lancet, Obstetrics and Gynecology, PLoS Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, Open Medicine, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, BMC Medicine, and Trials.Randomised controlled trials, when appropriately designed, conducted, and reported, represent the gold standard in evaluating healthcare interventions. However, randomised trials can yield biased results if they lack methodological rigour [1]. To assess a trial accurately, readers of a published report need complete, clear, and transparent information on its methodology and findings. Unfortunately, attempted assessments frequently fail because authors of many trial reports neglect to provide lucid and complete descriptions of that critical information [2-4].That lack of adequate reporting fuelled the development of the original CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) statement in 1996 [5] and its revision five years later [6-8]. While those statements improved the reporting quality for some randomised controlled trials, [9,10] many trial reports still remain inadequate [2]. Furthermore, new methodological evidence and additional experience has accumulated since the last revision in 2001. Consequently, we organised a CONSORT Group meeting to update the 2001 statement [6-8]. We introduce here the result of that process, CONSORT 2010.The CONSORT 2010 Statement is this paper including the 25 item checklist in the table (Table 1) and the flow diagram (Figure 1). It provides guidance for reporting all randomised controlled trials, but focuses on the most common design type-individually randomised, two group, parallel trials. Other trial designs, such as cluster randomised trials and non-inferiority trials, require varying amounts of additional information. CONSORT extensions for these designs, [11,12] and other CONSORT products, can be found through the CONSORT website http:
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/8/18