New guidelines on reporting multi-arm parallel-group randomised trials

Published on Wednesday, 24 April 2019 Post

A special communication describing an extension to the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Led by NPEU CTU Director and Associate Professor Ed Juszczak, the extension aims to provide greater transparency and accuracy in reporting of such trials, to enhance understanding of the methodology and allow readers to accurately assess the conduct of a trial and interpret the results.

This extension to the CONSORT 2010 statement checklist will enhance the reporting of multi-arm trials, and has an important educational role in improving their conduct. It therefore covers the overlapping areas of multi-arm trial methodology and reporting.

Among the recommendations of the extension are that multi-arm trials be identified as such by the authors and that clear objectives and hypotheses referring to all the treatment groups be stated. If periods of recruitment and follow-up are different across groups, these should be explained, along with the statistical implications.

You can read about the CONSORT extension in JAMA.