title: Hepato-biliary clinical trials and their inclusion in the Cochrane Hepato-Biliary Group register and reviews.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The Cochrane Hepato-Biliary Group (CHBG) is one of the 52 collaborative review groups within The Cochrane Collaboration. The activities of the CHBG focus on collecting hepato-biliary randomized clinical trials (RCT) and controlled clinical trials (CCT), and including them in systematic reviews with meta-analyses of the trials. In this overview, we present the growth of The CHBG Controlled Trials Register, as well as the systematic reviews that have been produced since March 1996.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The CHBG register includes almost 11,000 RCT and 700 CCT publications. The earliest RCT in the register were published in 1955, and the earliest CCT in 1945. From 1945 to 1980, there were less than 100 publications each year. From 1981 to 1997, their number increased from over 100 to 600 a year. After 1997, the number of publications seems to have been decreasing. The CHBG has published 199 protocols for systematic reviews and 107 systematic reviews through to August 2009 in which 21% of the RCT and CCT were included. The CHBG reviews have been cited approximately 1200 times.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A large amount of work has been carried out since 1996. However, there is still much to do, as the CHBG register contains a great number of RCT and CCT on topics that have not yet been systematically reviewed.
authors.affiliation: The Cochrane Hepato-Biliary Group, Copenhagen Trial Unit, Centre for Clinical Intervention Research, Department 3344, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark. slk@ctu.rh.dk
authors.forename: Sarah Louise
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Klingenberg
authors.forename: Dimitrinka
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Nikolova
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Alexakis
authors.forename: Bodil
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Als-Nielsen
authors.forename: Agostino
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Colli
authors.forename: Dario
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Conte
authors.forename: Gennaro
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: D'Amico
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Davidson
authors.forename: Abe
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fingerhut
authors.forename: Mirella
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fraquelli
authors.forename: Lise Lotte
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Gluud
authors.forename: Kurinchi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Gurusamy
authors.forename: Frederik
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Keus
authors.forename: Saboor
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Khan
authors.forename: Ronald
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Koretz
authors.forename: Cornelis
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: van Laarhoven
authors.forename: Jianping
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Myers
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Pagliaro
authors.forename: Rosa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Simonetti
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sutton
authors.forename: Kristian
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Thorlund
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gluud
mesh_terms: D022126:Access to Information; D015706:Bibliometrics; D001660:Biliary Tract Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy*; D018849:Controlled Clinical Trials as Topic; D057225:Data Mining; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D005762:Gastroenterology; D006801:Humans; D008107:Liver Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy*; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D012042:Registries; D016896:Treatment Outcome