Interpretation
The number of unused trials (32%) compares unfavourably to the audit of the fertility trials over the same time period where only 14% of all trials in the specialised register being classified as unused(17). The Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group (CARIG) paper (7) that found 41% of the RCTs in their specialised register were unused, although this difference could be attributed to the longer time-period of this audit, as the CARIG group incorporated 5285 trials from 1930 to 2014.
Trials using plant and herbal remedies for menopausal symptoms were the most commonly unused trials, this does not reflect the increasing consumer interest in complementary medicine(18). The wastage of these unused trials is an important ethical consideration for the women enrolled in these trials. In the future we need to ensure that their sacrifice is not wasted, and they would be willing to participate in future trials (11, 15).
One of the top ten questions for endometriosis in the priority setting partnerships(8-10): “what are the outcomes and/or success rates for surgical or medical treatments which aim to cure or treat endometriosis rather than manage it?”, fits broadly into our identified SR topic for endometriosis ‘Surgical techniques for laparoscopic resection of endometrioma’.
In accordance with the recommendations of priority setting exercises(8), the next step for prioritisation of topics in this project is to develop a short survey to be disseminated to healthcare consumers (via task exchange) and to the CGF editors for prioritisation of the new review topics.