Designing studies and reviews to produce informative, trustworthy evidence about complex interventions in rehabilitation: a narrative review and commentary.
William M Levack, Douglas P Gross, Rachelle A Martin, Susanna Every-Palmer, Carlotte Kiekens, Claudio Cordani, Stefano Negrini
PMID 38922317WHAT IT FOUND
This paper is a methodological commentary, not a clinical trial.
It discusses how to design research for complex rehabilitation interventions but provides no evidence on whether specific treatments work for patients.
What this paper is
This is a narrative review and commentary discussing the theoretical frameworks and methodological challenges of researching complex rehabilitation interventions. It outlines definitions of complexity, describes the MRC-NIHR framework, and presents case examples of how research designs have been applied, but it does not report original patient data, conduct a meta-analysis, or test a clinical intervention. Consequently, there are no direct findings on treatment efficacy or safety to change clinical practice.