What is missing from descriptions of treatment in trials and reviews?

Abstract

Why are full descriptions of treatment important?The uptake of positive findings from trials is often slow and sometimes negligible.3 Reasons for this slow uptake include clinicians not becoming aware of the results, perceiving the results as either invalid or not relevant to their patients, or simply not remembering to use the treatment.4 5 An additional barrier, which has received less attention, is clinicians’ ability to carry out the treatment on the basis of the information provided in the published reports. For example, after receiving numerous requests for additional details from doctors and patients, the author of a randomised trial on graded exercise for chronic fatigue syndrome6 subsequently published a supplementary article with a more detailed “prescription.”7 Similarly, it is not possible to set upa stroke unit, offer low fat diets, or give smoking cessation advice without sufficient details on the components that were planned and delivered.8