Impacto do spin em resumo de ensaio clínico na interpretação clínica de fisioterapeutas

Abstract

Introduction: In the scientific community, distorting, masking, and biasing results refers to a practice called spin. This practice becomes a risk for the Evidence-Based Practice of physiotherapists because it negatively impacts the interpretation of results and affects therapeutic judgment. Objective: To compare the clinical interpretation of physiotherapists on the abstract of randomized controlled clinical trials reported with and without spin. Materials and methods: This was a cross-sectional study with two groups, one control and one spin, with randomized distribution of individuals. An abstract with the highest score on the spin checklist and the lowest on CONSORT-A was selected after performing an analysis of agreement between different evaluators and adapted into two versions: one rewritten without spin and the other maintaining the original distortions (with spin). The physiotherapists were randomized into two groups: the abstract group with spin (GCS=59) and the abstract group without spin (GSS=53), from which the responses of these professionals about the interpretation of the clinical trial abstract were collected. Results: It was possible to observe that 37.5% of the physiotherapists failed to interpret the summary by recommending a treatment without proven efficacy. The group exposed to the summary with spin evaluated the treatment as more beneficial (p<0.001) and the group that received the version without spin considered the study methodologically more rigorous and of greater scientific relevance (p<0.013). The chance of the group with spin recommending/using a treatment without efficacy was 12.61 times (CI95%= 4.52 to 33.26) greater compared to the group without spin (p<0.001). However, it was not possible to observe an association between the level and time of training on the failure to interpret the summary. Conclusions: Physiotherapists exposed to abstracts with spin are more likely to recommend/use a treatment without efficacy, regardless of the academic level and time of training of the professionals.