Rapid, accurate publication and dissemination of clinical trial results: benefits and challenges.

Large-scale clinical trials are essential in cardiology and require rapid, accurate publication, and dissemination. Whereas conference presentations, press releases, and social media disseminate information quickly and often receive considerable coverage by mainstream and healthcare media, they lack detail, may emphasize selected data, and can be open to misinterpretation. Preprint servers speed access to research manuscripts while awaiting acceptance for publication by a journal, but these articles are not formally peer-reviewed and sometimes overstate the findings. Publication of trial results in a major journal is very demanding but the use of existing checklists can help accelerate the process. In case of rejection, procedures such as easing formatting requirements and possibly carrying over peer-review to other journals could speed resubmission. Secondary publications can help maximize benefits from clinical trials; publications of secondary endpoints and subgroup analyses further define treatment effects and the patient populations most likely to benefit. These rely on data access, and although data sharing is becoming more common, many challenges remain. Beyond publication in medical journals, there is a need for wider knowledge dissemination to maximize impact on clinical practice. This might be facilitated through plain language summary publications. Social media, websites, mainstream news outlets, and other publications, although not peer-reviewed, are important sources of medical information for both the public and for clinicians. This underscores the importance of ensuring that the information is understandable, accessible, balanced, and trustworthy. This report is based on discussions held on December 2021, at the 18th Global Cardiovascular Clinical Trialists meeting, involving a panel of editors of some of the top medical journals, as well as members of the lay press, industry, and clinical trialists.

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© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society of Cardiology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [e-mail].

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Conflict of interest: Zannad: Personal fees from Acceleron, Amgen, Applied Therapeutics, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Biopeutics, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cardior Pharmaceuticals, Cereno Scientific, Cellprothera, CVRx, G3 Pharmaceuticals, Merck, Merck AG, Novartis, NovoNordisk, Pfizer, Roche, Servier, and Vifor Fresenius; is the Co-founder of cardiorenal and Founder of CVCT. Crea: Personal fees from Amgen, Astra Zeneca, Servier, and BMS; and membership on a GlyCardial Diagnostics advisory board. Keaney: None. Spencer: None. Hill: Honoraria for institutional speaking engagements; serves as Chair on the Board of Directors for Sarnoff Research Foundation. Pfeffer: Grants or contracts paid to institution from Novartis; consulting fees from Alnylam, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly Alliance, Corvidia, DalCor, GlaxoSmithKline, Lexicon, NHLBI CONNECTs (Master Protocol Committee), Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Peerbridge, and Sanofi; membership on Data Safety Monitoring Boards for the DELIVER (Chair, 2018–2022), TACT3a (2019-ongoing), and COLCORONA (2020–2021) studies; and stock or stock options from DalCor. Pocock: None. Raderschadt: Employment by Boehringer Ingelheim. Ross: Grants or contracts paid to institution from the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), US National Institutes of Health (NIH), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Johnson & Johnson, Medical Devices Innovation Consortium, and Arnold Ventures; served as an expert witness in a qui tam suit against Biogen Inc.; is the co-founder of medRxiv, and serves as an Associate Research Editor at BMJ. Sacks: Employment as the Executive Editor for NEJM Evidence. Van Spall: Grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Heart and Stroke Foundation (HSF). Winslow: None. Jessup: None.