| SYSTEMATIC REVIEW |
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| Year : 2015 | Volume
: 6
| Issue : 4 | Page : 129-133 |
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Assessment of blinding success among dental implant clinical trials: A systematic review
Jafar Kolahi1, Saber Khazaei2
1 Independent Research Scientist, Founder and Managing Editor of Dental Hypotheses, Isfahan, Iran
2 Department of Research, School of Dentistry, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran
Correspondence Address:
Jafar Kolahi
N 24, Pardis, Shahin Shahr, Isfahan - 8317918981
Iran
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/2155-8213.170636
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Introduction: It is widely believed that blinding is a cornerstone of randomized clinical trials and that significant bias may result from unsuccessful blinding. However, it is not enough to claim that a clinical trial is single- or double-blinded and that assessment of the success of blinding is ideal. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of assessment of blinding success among dental implant clinical trials and to introduce methods of blinding assessment to the implant research community. Methods: In November 2014, PubMed was searched by blinded and experienced researchers with the query "implant AND (blind* OR mask*)" using the following filters: (1) Article type: clinical trial; (2) Journal categories: dental journals; (3) Field: title/abstract. Consequently, title/abstract was reviewed in all relevant articles to find any attempt to assess the success of blinding in dental implant clinical trials. Results: The PubMed search results yielded 86 clinical trials. The point of interest is that when "blind* OR mask*" was deleted from the query, the number of results increased to 1688 clinical trials. This shows that only 5% of dental implant clinical trials tried to use blinding. Disappointingly, we could not find any dental implant clinical trial reporting any attempt to assess the success of blinding. Conclusion: The current status of turning a blind eye to unblinding in dental implant clinical trials is not tolerable and needs to be improved. Researchers, protocol reviewers, local ethical committees, journal reviewers, and editors should make a concerted effort to incorporate, report, and publish such information to understand its potential impact on study results. |
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