Abstract

Objective: To describe the methodological quality of periodontal clinical trials in journals indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Materials and methods: Descriptive observational study in which the clinical trials published in four ISI-indexed periodontics journals between January 2008 and December 2012 were evaluated. The journals were selected as they had had the highest impact factor in the last 5 years according to the Journal Citation Reports. For each journal, papers were searched for in PubMed. Only clinical trials were selected to conduct the qualitative analysis using a methodological quality scale. Statistical analysis was conducted with SPSS Statistics 20 for Windows (IBM, Chicago, USA), and the data were presented through descriptive statistics. Results: The following journals fulfilled the selection criteria: Journal of Clinical Periodontology, Journal of Periodontology, Journal of Periodontal Research and International Journal of Periodontics & Restorative Dentistry. From these journals, 387 clinical trials were analyzed. Of the maximum of 24 points in the scale, the mean reached was 17.45 points. Conclusion: The methodological quality of periodontal clinical trials indexed in ISI is deficient.