Herbal traditional Chinese medicine and its evidence base in gastrointestinal disorders

Table 1 Consolidated standards of reporting trial criteria and level of adherence in herbal traditional Chinese medicine treatment clinical trials

Item	Criterion	Adherence
Group allocation	Randomization	Often claimed; specifics are rarely reported
Hypothesis	Prospective formulation	Rarely reported
Parameter	Primary, secondary outcome	Rarely reported; often inclusion of parameters irrelevant to the initial question
Patients, Treatment time	Selection, rationale for duration	Mostly given
Intervention, control	Herbal composition, placebo	Often lacking, even for drugs under consideration
Blinding	Physician, patient blinding	Often lacking
Data evaluation	Statistical methods	Often lacking. In a lot of publications the reanalysis is impossible or gives different results
	Data selection	Often only report of criteria which are statistically significant. Rarely report of data being comparable
	Data presentation	Often no data for range, standard deviation, confidence interval or relative risk presented
		Often no distinction between “in group“ effects and “between group“ effects
Interpretation	Conclusions	Often overoptimistic. Lack of consideration for results not fitting the initial assumption

Data compilation and modification from a previous report[30]. CONSORT: Consolidated standards of reporting trials; TCM: Traditional Chinese medicine.