Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials - History

History

In 1993, 30 experts - medical journal editors, clinical trialists, epidemiologists, and methodologists - met in Ottawa, Canada to discuss ways of improving the reporting of randomized trials. This meeting resulted in the Standardized Reporting of Trials (SORT) statement, a 32-item checklist and flow diagram in which investigators were encouraged to report on how randomized trials were conducted.

Concurrently, and independently, another group of experts, the Asilomar Working Group on Recommendations for Reporting of Clinical Trials in the Biomedical Literature, convened in California, USA, and were working on a similar mandate. This group also published recommendations for authors reporting randomized trials.

At the suggestion of Dr. Drummond Rennie, from JAMA, in 1995 representatives from both these groups met in Chicago, USA, with the aim of merging the best of the SORT and Asilomar proposals into a single, coherent evidence-based recommendation. This resulted in the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Statement, which was first published in 1996. Further meetings of the CONSORT Group in 1999 and 2000 led to the publication of the revised CONSORT Statement in 2001.

Since the revision in 2001, the evidence base to inform CONSORT has grown considerably; empirical data highlighting new concerns regarding the reporting of randomized trials. Therefore, a third CONSORT Group meeting was held in 2007 resulting in publication of a newly revised CONSORT Statement and explanatory document in 2010. Users of the guideline are strongly recommended to refer to the most up-to-date version while writing or interpreting reports of clinical trials.