Open AccessBlinding, sham, and treatment effects in randomized controlled trials for back pain in 2000–2019: A review and meta-analytic approach
Author(s) -
Brian M. Freed,
B. Williams,
Xiaolu Situ,
Victoria Landsman,
Jeehyoung Kim,
Alex Moroz,
Heejung Bang,
Jongbae J. Park
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
clinical trials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.559
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1740-7753
pISSN - 1740-7745
DOI - 10.1177/1740774520984870
Subject(s) - blinding , medicine , randomized controlled trial , physical therapy , confidence interval , placebo , randomization , meta analysis , surgery , alternative medicine , pathology
Blinding aims to minimize biases from what participants and investigators know or believe. Randomized controlled trials, despite being the gold standard to evaluate treatment effect, do not generally assess the success of blinding. We investigated the extent of blinding in back pain trials and the associations between participant guesses and treatment effects.