Results
The aforementioned steps aimed at assessing the comprehensiveness of outcome reporting in obstetric trials, culminated in the COR Tool, an Excel Workbook with 54 sheets allowing for assessment of up to fifty clinical trials within the setting of a systematic review. The user begins with the sheet named ‘Master Sheet’, where Steps 1 to 4 are completed as detailed above. The user interface for Steps 2 and 3 of the ‘Master Sheet’ can be seen in Figure 1, and the user interface upon completion of Step 4 determining how to measure outcomes, is shown in Figure 2. All information required by researcher aiming to select outcomes for a trial, would be available on the interface shown in Figure 2.
A systematic reviewer, critical appraiser, or clinician seeking to assess comprehensiveness of outcome reporting in a said number of trials, would need to continue further, by assessing the comprehensiveness of outcome reporting for each trial, on separate programmed sheets, within the tool’s workbook. As the data is entered onto individual sheets, it is automatically collated to generate the heatmap output found under the sheet labelled, ‘COR Tool’. Figure 3 is an example of what this heatmap might look like, following the assessment of twenty mock trials, and provides a visual description of the comprehensiveness as follows:
This example shows how the heatmap, by providing a visual summary of the comprehensiveness of outcome reporting, can, along with the Cochrane ROB or similar tools, add an important dimension to the appraisal of trials for purposes of systematic reviews.