assessment of non-comparative studies and five for use with com-
The list of 12 items was then sent to 100 surgeons
throughout France who had clinical research expertise in different
specialities, including digestive, cardiovascular and thoracic sur-
gery, gynaecology, otorhinolaryngology, orthopaedics, urology,
neurosurgery, and ophthalmology. They were asked to score the
ability of each item to assess the quality of a given study using a
7-point-scale, according to the method proposed by Oxman and
Guyatt.7 The mean score for each item was then compared with
that of every other item to see whether there were any significant
differences.