SynthesisEye (London, England)2025
Non-inferiority trials in clinical ophthalmology: a systematic review.
Synthesis in Eye (London, England), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeTo summarize the characteristics and methodology of non-inferiority trials in ophthalmology, aiding researchers in understanding the applications and limitations of such trials in ophthalmic diseases.
methodsPubMed, Web of Science, Embase and Scopus were searched for literature on non-inferiority randomized trials in ophthalmology published between 2000 and November 5 2023. Data on the basic characteristics were extracted and summarized. The Risk of Bias 2's was used to assess the bias risk.
resultsA total of 294 papers were included, with 77.6% of the trials conducted in the last 10 years, and more than 2/3 (72.1%) were multicenter studies, and 79.9% were registered on platforms. The majority of trials were applied in the researches of glaucoma, cataract, age macular degeneration, macular edema, dry eye, myopia, or refractive error. Non-inferiority thresholds were reported in 88.4% of the trials. Intent-to-treat analysis was the primary outcome analysis method in only 21.8% of trials, while both intent-to-treat and per-protocol analyses were used in 29.6%. Last observation carried forward method was used to address missing values in 23.5%. However, 56.5% of the articles did not report how missing values were handled, leaving uncertainty regarding whether missing data was considered in the analysis. About 20.7% of the studies were at high risk of bias, mainly due to outcome measures and missing value treatments.
conclusionNon-inferiority trials are commonly used in ophthalmologic research to assess the effectiveness, safety, cost-effectiveness of treatments or surgical methods, but the quality of implementation and reporting needs to be improved.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.