Objectives and Methods: The Standards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture (STRICTA) werepublished in five journals in 2001 and 2002. These guidelines, in the form of a checklist and explanations for use byauthors and journal editors, were designed to improve reporting of acupuncture trials, particularly the interventions,thereby facilitating their interpretation and replication. Subsequent reviews of the application and impact of STRICTAhave highlighted the value of STRICTA, as well as the need for improvements and revision. To manage the revisionprocess a collaboration between the STRICTA Group, the CONSORT Group, and the Chinese Cochrane Center wasdeveloped in 2008. An expert panel with 47 participants was convened that provided electronic feedback on a reviseddraft of the checklist was convened. At a subsequent face-to-face meeting in Freiburg, a group of 21 participantsfurther revised the STRICTA checklist and planned its dissemination.Results: The new STRICTA checklist, which is an official extension of CONSORT, includes six items and 17 sub-items.These set out reporting guidelines for the acupuncture rationale, the details of needling, the treatment regimen,other components of treatment, the practitioner’s background, and the control or comparator interventions. In addi-tion, and as part of this revision process, the explanation for each item has been elaborated, and examples of goodreporting for each item have been provided. In addition, the word “controlled” in STRICTA is replaced by “clinical”to indicate that STRICTA is applicable to a broad range of clinical evaluation designs, including uncontrolled outcomestudies and case reports.Conclusion: The revised STRICTA, in conjunction with both the main CONSORT statement and an extension fornonpharmacologic treatment, is intended to raise the quality of reporting of clinical trials of acupuncture.
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