Methodological Reporting Quality of Randomized Controlled Trials in Three Leading Sports Medicine Journals over 10 Years

Background Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the gold standard scientific testing for medical interventions. However, low-quality RCTs may provide misleading evidence. This research elucidated the methodological reporting quality of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in three sports medicine journals over 10 years following the CONSORT statement. Methods and Findings In this study, we evaluated the methodological reporting quality of RCTs in three major sports medicine journals, including Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, British Journal of Sports Medicine and Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine from 2008 to 2017. The methodological reporting quality, including the allocation sequence generation, allocation concealment, blinding, type of analysis, handling of dropouts were revealed. Number of patients, funding source, type of intervention and country were retrieved. The methodological reporting quality was descriptively reported. A total of 475 trials were involved and 166 (34.9%) trials reported adequate allocation generation, 124 (26.1%) trials reported adequate allocation concealment, 262(55.2%) trials reported adequate blinding, 122 (25.7%) trials reported type of analysis and 100 (21.1%) trials reported handling of dropouts. Conclusions This study shows that the methodological reporting quality of RCTs in the three major sports medicine journals were unsatisfactory and it can be further improved.