Completeness of reporting for COVID-19 case reports, January to April 2020: a meta-epidemiologic study.
Bibliography of Medicine
Bibliometrics
COVID-19
/ diagnosis
Checklist
/ standards
Data Management
Epidemiologic Studies
Ethics
Guideline Adherence
Humans
Outcome Assessment, Health Care
Publishing
/ standards
Research Report
/ standards
SARS-CoV-2
/ genetics
Social Media
/ statistics & numerical data
Journal
CMAJ open
ISSN: 2291-0026
Titre abrégé: CMAJ Open
Pays: Canada
ID NLM: 101620603
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Historique:
entrez:
31
3
2021
pubmed:
1
4
2021
medline:
10
4
2021
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
The quality of case reports, which are often the first reported evidence for a disease, may be negatively affected by a rush to publication early in a pandemic. We aimed to determine the completeness of reporting (COR) for case reports published on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We conducted a systematic search of the PubMed database for all single-patient case reports of confirmed COVID-19 published from Jan. 1 to Apr. 24, 2020. All included case reports were assessed for adherence to the CARE (Case Report) 31-item checklist, which was used to create a composite COR score. The primary outcome was the mean COR score assessed by 2 independent raters. Secondary outcomes included whether there was a change in overall COR score with certain publication factors (e.g., publication date) and whether there was a linear relation between COR and citation count and between COR scores and social media attention. Our search identified 196 studies that were published in 114 unique journals. We found that the overall mean COR score was 54.4%. No one case report included all of the 31 CARE checklist items. There was no significant correlation between COR with either citation count or social media attention. We found that the overall COR for case reports on COVID-19 was poor. We suggest that journals adopt common case-reporting standards to improve reporting quality.
Sections du résumé
BACKGROUND
The quality of case reports, which are often the first reported evidence for a disease, may be negatively affected by a rush to publication early in a pandemic. We aimed to determine the completeness of reporting (COR) for case reports published on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
METHODS
We conducted a systematic search of the PubMed database for all single-patient case reports of confirmed COVID-19 published from Jan. 1 to Apr. 24, 2020. All included case reports were assessed for adherence to the CARE (Case Report) 31-item checklist, which was used to create a composite COR score. The primary outcome was the mean COR score assessed by 2 independent raters. Secondary outcomes included whether there was a change in overall COR score with certain publication factors (e.g., publication date) and whether there was a linear relation between COR and citation count and between COR scores and social media attention.
RESULTS
Our search identified 196 studies that were published in 114 unique journals. We found that the overall mean COR score was 54.4%. No one case report included all of the 31 CARE checklist items. There was no significant correlation between COR with either citation count or social media attention.
INTERPRETATION
We found that the overall COR for case reports on COVID-19 was poor. We suggest that journals adopt common case-reporting standards to improve reporting quality.
Identifiants
pubmed: 33785477
pii: 9/1/E295
doi: 10.9778/cmajo.20200140
pmc: PMC8096411
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
E295-E301Informations de copyright
© 2021 Joule Inc. or its licensors.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
Competing interests: Rishad Khan has received research grants from AbbVie and Ferring Pharmaceuticals, and research funding from Pendopharm. Samir Grover has received research grants and personal fees from AbbVie; has received personal fees from Takeda, Amgen and Lupin; and has equity in Volo Healthcare. No other competing interests were declared.
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