Description of interventions is under-reported in physical therapy clinical trials

Amongst several barriers to the application of quality clinical evidence and clinical guidelines into routine daily practice, poor description of interventions reported in clinical trials has received less attention. Although some studies have investigated the completeness of descriptions of non-pharmacological interventions in randomized trials, studies that exclusively analyzed physical therapy interventions reported in published trials are scarce.

To evaluate the quality of descriptions of interventions in both experimental and control groups in randomized controlled trials published in four core physical therapy journals.

We included all randomized controlled trials published from the Physical Therapy Journal, Journal of Physiotherapy, Clinical Rehabilitation, and Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation between June 2012 and December 2013. Each randomized controlled trial (RCT) was analyzed and coded for description of interventions using the checklist developed by Schroter et al.

Out of 100 RCTs selected, only 35 RCTs (35%) fully described the interventions in both the intervention and control groups. Control group interventions were poorly described in the remaining RCTs (65%).

Interventions, especially in the control group, are poorly described in the clinical trials published in leading physical therapy journals. A complete description of the intervention in a published report is crucial for physical therapists to be able to use the intervention in clinical practice.