  Objective: Randomized controlled trial (RCT) results often inform clinical
decision-making, but the highly curated populations of trials and the care
provided during the trial are often not reflective of real-world practice. The
objective of this scoping review is to identify the ability of methods to
transport findings from RCTs to target populations. Study design: A scoping
review was conducted on the literature focusing on the transportability of the
results from RCTs to observational cohorts. Each study was assessed based on
the methodology used for transportability and the extent to which the treatment
effect from the RCT was estimated in the target population in observational
data. Results: A total of 15 published papers were included. The research
topics include cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases, psychiatry,
oncology, orthopedics, anesthesiology, and hematology. These studies show that
the findings from RCTs could be translated to real-world settings, with varying
degrees of effect size and precision. In some cases, the estimated treatment
effect for the target population were statistically significantly different
from those in RCTs. Conclusion: Despite variations in the magnitude of effects
between RCTs and real-world studies, transportability methods play an important
role in effectively bridging the RCTs and real-world care delivery, offering
valuable insights for evidence-based medicine.
