Quality assessment of clinical research on liver cancer treated by intra-arterial infusion of Chinese medicine.
OBJECTIVE
To assess the methodological quality of clinical research on Chinese medicine (CM) applied by intra-arterial infusion in treating primary liver cancer (PLC).


METHODS
Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), PubMed, and three Chinese databases, including Chinese BioMedical Database (CBM), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and China Academic Journal (VIP) were searched. Chinese articles were also searched manually in 16 journals. Two reviewers independently selected studies, the quality of literatures were assessed according to the Cochrane Collaboration method of quality assessment.


RESULTS
A total of 14 articles met the inclusion criteria for this review. Only three of these articles described the randomization method used. None of the studies was blinded. All of the articles didn't report the calculation of the sample size. Only six studies mentioned adverse reactions. All of the studies were of grade C according to the Cochrane Collaboration method. Six studies reported results of survival, and only two of these reported better efficacy in the treatment groups.


CONCLUSIONS
The quality of studies concerned intra-arterial infusion of CM in treating with PLC was poor and the exact effect of these medicines still need evaluation. Well designed RCTs with large sample sizes, adequate follow-up data and reliable methods of assessment are needed to better appraise the real effect of CMs in the treatment of PLC patients.
Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Changhai Hospital, the Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, 200433, China.
Xiao-Feng
XF
Zhai
Cui-Xia
CX
Qiao
Qun
Q
Liu
Zhe
Z
Chen
Chang-Quan
CQ
Ling
D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000592:standards*; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006801:Humans; D007261:Infusions, Intra-Arterial; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000628:therapy*; D008516:Medicine, Chinese Traditional; D012107:Research Design