Abstract
BackgroundIn 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic developed into a global crisis, the enormity and urgency of which accelerated research activities in the field. At the same time, manuscripts describing these research projects underwent fast-track peer review procedures and were published in freely accessible formats. Although full texts about COVID-19 are currently available for free, abstracts continue to play a key role since they provide essential information and possibly a decision basis for therapies. s are particularly important in case the full texts are not free, not all reports have been published in English and in emergency situations when there is less time for comprehensive analysis of all full texts. It is therefore necessary to ensure that abstracts—as publications in miniature format—contain comprehensive and transparent information. The CONSORT statement for abstracts (CONSORT-A) offers guidelines to authors how to include all necessary information in an abstract.Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the quality of reporting in medical research had already been the object of debate and criticism. The current crisis makes comprehensive documentation all the more important. s of COVID-19 RCTs should therefore report the criteria listed in the CONSORT-A statement fully and verifiably. The objective of this study is to check the completeness of abstracts of all COVID-19 RTCs published to date.MethodsBased on a literature search in PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane Library, all publications up to 29 October 2020 are identified and examined in terms of the subject matter (reported results from COVID-19 studies) and their study design (RTC). Subsequently, suitable publications are examined for completeness and quality of abstracts. The CONSORT checklist for RTC abstracts serves as a basis in this procedure. The primary endpoint of the study is the percentage of correctly implemented items of the CONSORT statement for abstracts. The frequency of correct reporting of each individual item is checked in a second step.DiscussionThe study is expected to contribute to evaluating the reporting quality on COVID-19 studies, and specifically the completeness of abstracts of RTCs. It may thus support the assessment of current research into COVID-19.Trial registrationRegistration was not required as the study investigated existing literature.
Highlights
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic developed into a global crisis, the enormity and urgency of which accelerated research activities in the field
A detailed amendment referring to Randomised controlled trial (RCT) abstracts (CONSORT-A statement) was added in 2008, since various studies revealed considerable shortcomings in the quality of abstracts [2]
In view of the current relevance of the COVID-19 disease, the present study aims to assess the completeness of reporting in RCT abstracts on COVID-19
Summary
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic developed into a global crisis, the enormity and urgency of which accelerated research activities in the field. Full texts about COVID-19 are currently available for free, abstracts continue to play a key role since they provide essential information and possibly a decision basis for therapies. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the quality of reporting in medical research had already been the object of debate and criticism. As early as 1996, the CONSORT group drew up a checklist and made it available to all authors of clinical studies as a guideline for transparent and comprehensive reporting. Even criteria of essential importance for the interpretation of results were documented in only a small proportion of abstracts (results: 13%, number of patients analysed: 17%) These findings reveal massive deficits in terms of transparent and comprehensive reporting in RCT abstracts, with severe implications for a correct interpretation of study results
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