Quality assessment of the clinical trials with Chinese Medicine on menopausal syndrome in the last five years: from the view of evidence-based medicine

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To assess the quality of the randomized controlled trials (RCT) or quasi-randomized controlled trials with Chinese medicine on menopausal syndrome in the last five years and discuss how to improve the quality of RCT with Chinese medicine. METHODS: The Chinese databases include VIP Information (2004.1-), CBM disc (2004.1-), and CNKI (2004.1-). The English databases include MEDLINE(2004.1-), PsychINFO (2004.1-), the Cochrane Library database (2004.1-), EBSCOhost (2004.1-), AMED (2004.1-). The Cochrane Collaboration’s Tool for assessing risk of bias was used to analyze the methodological quality in these trials. RESULTS: 30 studies were included in our review. Two reviewers assess the quality independently. Rev Man 5.0 was used to analyze (Figure 1 and Figure 2). CONCLUSION: There exist a lot of problems in the clinical trials with Chinese medicine from the view of evidence-based medicine. To improve the quality, further training was needed among the Chinese medicine practitioners.