What Makes A Great Clinical Trial? Exploring The Features Of Five Important Physiotherapy Trials

Some clinical trials are landmark trials that grab international attention. Others fail to excite. What is the difference between a great trial and a mediocre trial? A recent initiative provides some insights.\n\nThe Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) is a free, online database of randomised trials, systematic reviews and practice guidelines in physiotherapy. To mark PEDro’s 20th anniversary, physiotherapists worldwide were invited to nominate randomised trials published in 2014–2019 that answered important clinical questions in a robust and innovative way (online supplementary file A). A panel of experts in clinical trials judged the nominations and established the top five trials: LIPPSMAck POP,1 SARAH,2 AVERT,3 HIHO4 and UK FASHIoN5 (table 1). The lessons learnt from the top five trials are relevant to trials in sports and exercise medicine because they all tested exercise interventions against other models of care (ie, phase III).### Supplementary data\n\n[bjsports-2020-102088supp001.pdf]\n\nView this table:\n\nTable 1 \nDescription of the top five trials\n\n\n\nNot every sports physiotherapist would think about upper abdominal surgery, but ‘Exercise is Medicine’ and physiotherapy can play a major role in preventing serious, common and costly pulmonary complications. LIPPSMAck POP1 demonstrated that a single …