OBJECTIVE To assess the effects of a mental practice intervention on recovery in stroke patients. DATA SOURCES A systematic literature search of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, PubMed/Medline, PsycINFO, Pedro, Rehadat, and RehabTrials was performed by 2 researchers independently. Eligible studies published through August 2005 were selected. STUDY SELECTION Four randomized contr...

Background: Anxiety reduction in patients with myocardial infarction (MI) is essential due to severe complications. The current methods of treatments are primarily medical, while effective and safe treatments which accord with cultural and religious beliefs appear to have higher performance. Aim: survey the effect of Quran on the anxiety of patients with MI admitted to CCU. Methods: The present...

BACKGROUND Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have long been considered the primary research study design capable of eliciting causal relationships between health interventions and consequent outcomes. However, with a prolonged duration from recruitment to publication, high-cost trial implementation, and a rigid trial protocol, RCTs are perceived as an impractical evaluation methodology for mo...

BACKGROUND While the randomized clinical trial is considered to provide the highest level of evidence in clinical medicine, its superiority to other study designs in the context of prevention studies is debated. The purpose of this review was (i) to gather evidence about challenges facing both randomized controlled trials and observational designs for the conduct of population-based chronic dis...

background corticosteroids are used to induce remission in auto-immune hepatitis. they are not universally effective; therefore, alternative treatments are needed. in this study cysclosporine-a has been compared with prednisolone as an alternative treatment in a randomized controlled trial. this paper is an interim analysis of an ongoing clinical trial. methods sixteen years and older consentin...