Pilot and Feasibility Trials in Surgery are Incompletely Reported According to the CONSORT Checklist: A Meta-Research Study

Pilot and feasibility studies are not reported completely as per reporting guidelines in fields of study such as nephrology and psychiatric. The reporting completeness of these types of studies in surgery has never been examined. We designed this study to evaluate previously published pilot and feasibility studies in surgery to assess their completeness of reporting. We found that only approximately half of the items in the reporting guideline checklist were routinely reported. This proportion of items reported has not improved since the publication of the reporting guideline checklist. Research factors that were associated with more complete reporting included registration of the study prospectively in a database, publication of a study protocol, and randomization of more than 50 patients. Similar to other fields of medical research, there remains work to be done to improve reporting completeness of pilot and feasibility studies.
Source: Journal of Clinical Epidemiology - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Tags: Review Source Type: research