A call for improving the internal validity and the reporting of manual therapy trials self-labelled as pragmatic: a methodological review

Abstract

Objectives: This study provides further data from a review assessing methodological characteristics of pragmatic randomised controlled trials (pRCTs) published in manual therapy (MT). In this second part, we aim to assess the report, the risk of bias (RoB), and the relationship between these items and the pragmatism scores of the self-labelled pRCTs in the MT field. Study design and setting: We searched MEDLINE and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials for pRCTs in the MT field from inception to January 2024. Two independent reviewers screened the trials using several CONSORT extensions and assessed them using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. We performed a descriptive analysis using frequencies and percentages and a relation analysis between the trials' pragmatism, their reporting, and their RoB. [...]