This analysis included a "fatal flaw" criterion, which would reject recommendations that failed to meet standards of cost, technical feasability, etc.
This approach is flawed because other criteria than the specific type of procedure performed may limit ambulatory use: the patient's clinical condition, other associated procedures.
> -wrap-foot> 2 Study meets criterion to a high standard, 1 study partially meets criterion, 0 flawed or the relevant information was not stated, X no or not stated, S self-reported outcome measure, P psychoacoustic outcome measure Randomisation is the preferred or 'gold standard' design in therapeutic or 'effectiveness of an intervention' research [ 46, 51, 52].
But there has been no research to date that has directly studied the one concern driving all of these criticisms — that the premise of the evaluation criteria is flawed.
However, the methodological quality of the testing procedures for all instruments was flawed, when considering the methodological criteria applied in this review.
The correspondents suggest that our study was flawed due to the inclusion criteria that they considered were arbitrarily defined and that led to selection bias.
To identify fatally flawed papers, we used the criteria in Table 1, adapted from those proposed (at the time of our review) by the National Health Service NHS National Electronic Library for Healthth for the evaluation of qualitative research, to inform judgements on the quality of the papers.
While the registration exercise was a logistic triumph, the registration criteria were fundamentally flawed and led to inclusion and exclusion errors both on IDP status and on the need for assistance.
In a recent Cochrane systematic review, even those studies that met the selection criteria were found to be flawed.
However, we do not think that these criteria solve the problem of detecting flawed trials.
