Compliance with the Consort Statement in Surgery

Recently, the Centre for Evidence in Transplantation published an analysis of compliance with the CONSORT statement in reports of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in transplantation, and found that the compliance left much to desire. A recent article in the Annals of Surgery analysed Consort compliance in 150 recently published RCTs in surgery, most of these being in General Surgery, Orthopaedic Surgery and Cardiothoracic surgery. The authors conclude that there was much room for improvement for the reporting of surgical intervention trials. This is very similar to the CET analysis of RCTs in organ transplantation. Thus we have to do better if we are to provide robust evidence in surgery and organ transplantation.