Meaning of the study: possible explanations and implications for clinicians and policymakers
It has been suggested that authors of external pilot trials that do not report progression criteria or report unclear progression criteria, may be optimistic in reporting that a definitive RCT is feasible [The feasibility rates observed in this study were higher than those that have been previously reported in external pilot trials, ending between 1995 and 2019, that were registered on the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trials Number (ISRCTN) registry (83%) [It has also been previously suggested that some external pilot trials might be redundant, i.e. they are conducted without sufficient uncertainty about feasibility that they are likely to show that an RCT will be feasible, and so waste time and resources [