Reporting of critical care trial abstracts: a comparison before and after the announcement of CONSORT guideline for abstracts

摘要

Background An extension of the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement provides a checklist of items to improve the reporting quality of s of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). However, authors of s in some fields have poorly adhered to this guideline. We did an extensive literature survey to examine the quality of reporting trial s in major critical care journals before and after announcement of the CONSORT guideline for s. Methods We reviewed s of RCTs published in four major critical care journals with publication dates ranging from 2006 to 2007 (pre-CONSORT) and from 2011 to 2012 (post-CONSORT): Intensive Care Medicine (ICM), Critical Care (CC), American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (AJRCCM), and Critical Care Medicine (CCM). For each item in the CONSORT guideline for s, we considered that an was well-reported when it reported a relevant item and adhered to the guideline. Our primary outcomes were to describe the proportion of s that adhered to the guideline for each item in each period and the changes between the two periods. Pearson’s chi-square analysis was performed to compare adherence to the guideline between the two periods. Results Our inclusion criteria yielded 185 and 166 s from pre- and post-CONSORT periods, respectively. Less than 50% of s adequately reported trial design (16.3%), participants (44.0%), outcomes in methods (49.4%), randomization (1.8%), blinding (4.2%), numbers randomized (37.4%) and analyzed (8.4%), recruitment (4.2%), outcomes in results (16.9%), harms (27.7%), trial registration (42.2%), and funding (13.9%) in the recent period. There was significant improvement in reporting title, primary outcomes in both methods and results, interventions, harms, trial registration, and funding between the two periods ( p Conclusions Reporting of some items in s for critical care trials improved over time, but the adherence to the CONSORT guideline for s was still suboptimal.