Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 26, 2025

Semi-Automated Planimetric Quantification of Dental Plaque Using an Intraoral Fluorescence Camera
Published on: January 27, 2023
Transparency in clinical trials: Adding value to paediatric dental research
Maximiliano Sérgio Cenci1, Marina Christ Franco1, Daniela Prócida Raggio2
1Graduate Program in Dentistry, School of Dentistry, Federal University of Pelotas, Pelotas, Brazil.
Background:
Even though considered as studies with high methodological power, many RCTs in paediatric dentistry do not have essential quality items in their design, development, and report, making results' reliability questionable, replication challenging to conduct, wasting time, money, and efforts, and even exposing the participants to research for no benefit.
Aim:
We addressed the main topics related to transparency in clinical research, with an emphasis in paediatric dentistry.
Design:
We searched for all controlled clinical trials published from January 2019 up to July 2020 in the three paediatric dentistry journals with high journal Impact Factor, indexed on Medline. These papers were assessed for transparency according to Open Science practices and regarding reporting accuracy using some items required by CONSORT.
Results:
53.6% of the studies declared registration, 75% had sample size calculation, 98.2% reported randomisation, and from those, 65.4% explained the randomisation method. Besides that, no study shared their data, and 6.8% were published in open access format.
Conclusions:
Unfortunately, a large proportion of RCTs in paediatric dental research show a lack of transparency and reproducibility.
Related Concept Videos
Clinical Trials
There are four phases in a clinical trial. A phase one...
Clinical Trials: Overview
Pharmacokinetics in Pediatric Patients: Overview and Drug Absorption
Preclinical Development: Overview
Pharmacokinetics in Pediatric Patients: Drug Excretion
Blinding

