Reporting diagnostic accuracy studies: some improvements after 10 years of STARD.

PURPOSE To evaluate how diagnostic accuracy study reports published in 2012 adhered to the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) statement and whether there were any differences in reporting compared with 2000 and 2004. MATERIALS AND METHODS PubMed was searched for studies published in 12 high-impact-factor journals in 2012 that evaluated the accuracy of one or more diagnostic tests against a clinical reference standard. Two independent reviewers scored reporting completeness of each article with the 25-item STARD checklist. Mixed-effects modeling was used to analyze differences in reporting with previous evaluations from articles published in 2000 and 2004. RESULTS Included were 112 articles. The overall mean number of STARD items reported in 2012 was 15.3 ± 3.9 (standard deviation; range, 6.0-23.5). There was an improvement of 3.4 items (95% confidence interval: 2.6, 4.3) compared with studies published in 2000, and an improvement of 1.7 items (95% confidence interval: 0.9, 2.5) compared with studies published in 2004. Significantly more items were reported for single-gate studies compared with multiple-gate studies (16.8 vs 12.1, respectively; P < .001) and for studies that evaluated imaging tests compared with laboratory tests and other types of tests (17.0 vs 14.0 vs 14.5, respectively; P < .001). CONCLUSION Completeness of reporting improved in the 10 years after the launch of STARD, but it remains suboptimal for many articles. Reporting of inclusion criteria and sampling methods for recruiting patients, information about blinding, and confidence intervals for accuracy estimates are in need of further improvement.

[1]  Johannes B Reitsma,et al.  Overinterpretation and misreporting of diagnostic accuracy studies: evidence of "spin". , 2013, Radiology.

[2]  D. A. Korevaar,et al.  Publication and reporting of test accuracy studies registered in ClinicalTrials.gov. , 2014, Clinical chemistry.

[3]  P. Bossuyt,et al.  The quality of diagnostic accuracy studies since the STARD statement , 2006, Neurology.

[4]  D. Rennie,et al.  Towards complete and accurate reporting of studies of diagnostic accuracy: the STARD initiative , 2003, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[5]  P. Bossuyt,et al.  Reproducibility of the STARD checklist: an instrument to assess the quality of reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies , 2006, BMC medical research methodology.

[6]  D. Altman,et al.  Effect of using reporting guidelines during peer review on quality of final manuscripts submitted to a biomedical journal: masked randomised trial , 2011, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[7]  L. Mbuagbaw,et al.  A systematic scoping review of adherence to reporting guidelines in health care literature , 2013, Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare.

[8]  John P A Ioannidis,et al.  Overinterpretation of clinical applicability in molecular diagnostic research. , 2009, Clinical chemistry.

[9]  Susan Mallett,et al.  A systematic review classifies sources of bias and variation in diagnostic test accuracy studies. , 2013, Journal of clinical epidemiology.

[10]  R. Holloway,et al.  There is nothing staid about STARD , 2006, Neurology.

[11]  Susan Mallett,et al.  QUADAS-2: A Revised Tool for the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies , 2011, Annals of Internal Medicine.

[12]  D. Rennie,et al.  The STARD statement for reporting studies of diagnostic accuracy: explanation and elaboration. , 2003, Annals of internal medicine.

[13]  P D Bezemer,et al.  Publications on diagnostic test evaluation in family medicine journals: an optimal search strategy. , 2000, Journal of clinical epidemiology.

[14]  Johannes B Reitsma,et al.  Case-control and two-gate designs in diagnostic accuracy studies. , 2005, Clinical chemistry.

[15]  Gary S Collins,et al.  Impact of peer review on reports of randomised trials published in open peer review journals: retrospective before and after study , 2014, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[16]  Lotty Hooft,et al.  Reporting quality of diagnostic accuracy studies: a systematic review and meta-analysis of investigations on adherence to STARD , 2013, Evidence-Based Medicine.

[17]  P. Bossuyt,et al.  Reporting the accuracy of diagnostic tests: the STARD initiative 10 years on. , 2013, Clinical chemistry.

[18]  P. Bossuyt,et al.  Empirical evidence of design-related bias in studies of diagnostic tests. , 1999, JAMA.

[19]  Johannes B Reitsma,et al.  Quality of reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies. , 2005, Radiology.