Clinical research is a critical field of medical science focused on studying health...
Medical research is a broad and essential field dedicated to advancing knowledge of...
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are considered the gold standard in clinical research for evaluating the efficacy and safety of medical interventions. In an RCT, participants are randomly assigned to either the intervention group (receiving the treatment being tested) or the control group (receiving a placebo or standard care), ensuring that the results are unbiased and statistically valid.
RCTs are essential for establishing cause-and-effect relationships between interventions and outcomes. Key components include randomization, blinding (single-blind, double-blind), control groups, outcome measures, and sample size calculation. Sub-types of RCTs include parallel-group trials, crossover trials, cluster randomized trials, and adaptive trials.