Specifying What We Study and Implement in Rehabilitation: Comments on the Reporting of Clinical Research

Several guidelines have been published with the goal of increasing the usefulness of reports of clinical research. Although such guidelines may clarify key features of study design, the way in which rehabilitation treatments themselves are described continues to be problematic and limits the ability to replicate research, synthesize evidence across studies, or apply these treatments in practice. Lohse et al report little improvement in the description of rehabilitation treatments in recent years, with particular limitations in the description of comparison or standard-of-care treatments. This commentary explores the kind of published treatment descriptions that would be most useful in supporting evidence synthesis and clinical implementation and examines the degree to which a developing conceptual framework-the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System-might support improvements in research reporting.