Randomised and controlled clinical trials published in the German sports medicine journal "Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Sportmedizin" between 1950 and 2004

Randomised controlled (RCTs) and controlled clinical trials (CCTs) are the most valid source for the assessment of the effectiveness of healthcare interventions. There is no reasonable chance to identify all available and relevant studies concerning a medical intervention since many articles were published in national journals and, thus they as non English-speaking publications, they are often not included in electronic databases like Medline (www.pubmed.gov). To be comprehensive, an electronically-driven database search has to be complemented by hand-searching of relevant medical journals. The aim of this study was to assess the quantity and quality of controlled clinical trials, published in "Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Sportmedizin" between 1950 and 2004. Materials und Methods: The journal "Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Sportmedizin" was searched manually for RCTs und CCTs. Trials identified were examined for aspects of quantity, quality and contents, based on the guidelines of the CONSORT-Statement. Results: 490 controlled trials were identified (182 RCTs; 308 CCTs). 289 (59%) of them had a training-scientific background, 143 (29%) a clinical background and 58 (12%) were multidisciplinary. The evaluation of the studies showed that CONSORT-criteria such as scientific background, kind of intervention, number of participants, statistical methods and interpretation of the results were described in the majority of articles (> 90 %). But important items like sample size calculation, randomisation-sequence generation, allocation concealment, blinding, number of participants analysed and statistical significance of the results were insufficiently (< 10 %) reported. Conclusion: The implementation of the CONSORT-Statement is mandatory to improve the quality of reports of RCTs. Therefore an increasing awareness and publicity of the CONSORT-Statement is needed, especially for journals, publishers and authors, also in the German-speaking areas.