Which to use: "Clinical Trial" [Publication Type] OR "Clinical Trials as Topic"[Mesh]?
"Randomized Controlled Trial" [Publication Type]) OR "Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic"[Mesh]?
Basically, "Publication Type" means it's an article about the results of a trial. "As Topic" means it's about the general topic of trials: maybe how to recruit patients, or how to conduct a specific aspect of a trial.
Recommendation: Publication Type
Examples of articles that were tagged with each MeSH term:
- Publication Type:
- Randomized Trial of Three Anticonvulsant Medications for Status Epilepticus.
- A Controlled Trial of Erenumab for Episodic Migraine
- Prevention of Arrhythmia Device Infection Trial: The PADIT Trial.
- As Topic:
- Key concepts of clinical trials: a narrative review.
- Strategies to improve recruitment to randomised trials.
- Challenges of developing and conducting clinical trials in rare disorders.
The official definitions:
Clinical Trials: https://www-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.ezproxy.rush.edu/mesh/?term=clinical+trials
- Clinical Trials as Topic: Works about pre-planned studies of the safety, efficacy, or optimum dosage schedule (if appropriate) of one or more diagnostic, therapeutic, or prophylactic drugs, devices, or techniques selected according to predetermined criteria of eligibility and observed for predefined evidence of favorable and unfavorable effects. This concept includes clinical trials conducted both in the U.S. and in other countries.
- Clinical Trial [Publication Type]: A work that reports on the results of a clinical study in which participants are assigned to receive one or more interventions so that researchers can evaluate the interventions on biomedical or health-related outcomes. The assignments are determined by the study protocol. Participants may receive diagnostic, therapeutic, or other types of interventions. For clinical trials on veterinary animals see CLINICAL TRIAL, VETERINARY. Clinical Trials was used for both humans and non-humans prior to 2019.
Randomized Controlled Trials: https://www-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.ezproxy.rush.edu/mesh/?term=randomized
- Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic: Works about clinical trials that involve at least one test treatment and one control treatment, concurrent enrollment and follow-up of the test- and control-treated groups, and in which the treatments to be administered are selected by a random process, such as the use of a random-numbers table.
- Randomized Controlled Trial [Publication Type]: A work that reports on a clinical trial that involves at least one test treatment and one control treatment, concurrent enrollment and follow-up of the test- and control-treated groups, and in which the treatments to be administered are selected by a random process, such as the use of a random-numbers table.
