Ann Arbor, Mich. From the Section of Plastic Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of Michigan Health System, and the Section of Plastic Surgery, University of Michigan Medical School.
Plast Reconstr Surg. 2012 Oct;130(4):959-965. doi: 10.1097/PRS.0b013e318262f4c8.
Selection of controls, a group of subjects who are identical to the treatment group in all aspects that affect the outcome except the intervention of interest, is a significant criterion for conducting a study in evidence-based medical research. Few studies emphasize the appropriate selection of control groups in the plastic surgery literature.
The authors performed a literature search in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery from January 1, 2010, through December 31, 2011, for studies in which controls were needed. The number of studies using a control group, control selection criteria, and the characteristics of the control populations were evaluated.
Three hundred twenty-seven articles were obtained from our search using the keywords "case control studies" and "retrospective cohort studies." Among these studies, 121 articles were studies conducted in humans. All of these studies based on the study design required a control group, yet only 63 studies (52 percent) had a comparative control group. Of these studies, the authors found biases regarding the choice of controls, including selection bias, misclassification bias, and chronology bias.
The authors' review shows that 48 percent of the studies published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery that were required to have a control group failed to incorporate a well-defined control group. Specific details pertaining to the methods used and the success obtained with those methods in recruiting controls need to be stated explicitly in the article to ensure uniformity and to support the validity of the research.
选择对照组，即除了研究中感兴趣的干预措施外，在所有影响结果的方面与治疗组相同的一组受试者，是进行循证医学研究的重要标准。在整形外科学文献中，很少有研究强调对照组的适当选择。
作者在 2010 年 1 月 1 日至 2011 年 12 月 31 日期间对《整形与重建外科》进行了文献检索，以寻找需要对照组的研究。评估了使用对照组的研究数量、对照组选择标准以及对照人群的特征。
通过使用“病例对照研究”和“回顾性队列研究”这两个关键词，我们从搜索中获得了 327 篇文章。这些研究中，有 121 篇是在人体上进行的。所有这些基于研究设计要求有对照组的研究中，仅有 63 项（52%）有对照比较组。在这些研究中，作者发现了关于对照组选择的偏见，包括选择偏倚、分类偏倚和时间偏倚。
作者的综述表明，在《整形与重建外科》中发表的需要对照组的研究中，有 48%的研究未能纳入明确界定的对照组。需要在文章中明确说明与招募对照组相关的方法以及使用这些方法获得的成功率的具体细节，以确保研究的一致性和有效性。
