Most positive hand surgery RCTs have very fragile results

Study Type:Therapy

OE Level Evidence:1

Journal Level of Evidence:N/A

The Fragility Index in Hand Surgery Randomized Controlled Trials

J Hand Surg Am. 2019;44(8):698. doi: 10.1016/j.jhsa.2018.10.005. Epub 2018 Nov 9

Contributing Authors: JJ Ruzbarsky S Khormaee A Daluiski

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Synopsis

The Fragility Index is an important concept when assessing the strength of findings from a positive RCT - essentially, the Fragility Index asks how many patients it would take with an opposite outcome in order for the overall trial results to become non-significant. In this paper, the authors apply this concept to RCTs in hand surgery. They include 5 RCTs with positive findings on a dichotomous pr...