Surgical Outcome Reporting. Moving From a Comic to a Tragic Opera?

Abstract

To assess the current quality of surgical outcome reporting in the medical literature and to provide recommendations for improvement. In 1996, The Lancet labeled surgery as a "comic opera" mostly referring to the poor quality of outcome reporting in the literature impeding improvement in surgical quality and patient care. We screened 3 first-tier and 2 second-tier surgical journals, as well as 3 leading medical journals for original articles reporting on results of surgical procedures published over a recent 18-month period. The quality of outcome reporting was assessed using a prespecified 12-item checklist. Six hundred twenty-seven articles reporting surgical outcomes were analyzed, including 125 randomized controlled trials. Only 1 (0.2%) article met all 12 criteria of the checklist, whereas 356 articles (57%) fulfilled less than half of the criteria. The poorest reporting was on cumulative morbidity burden, which was missing in 94% of articles (n=591) as well as patient-reported outcomes missing in 83% of publications (n=518). Comparing journal groups for the individual criterion, we found moderate to very strong statistical evidence for better quality of reporting in high versus lower impact journals for 7 of 12 criteria and strong statistical evidence for better reporting of patient-reported outcomes in medical versus surgical journals ( P <0·001). The quality of outcomes reporting in the medical literature remains poor, lacking improvement over the past 20 years on most key end points. The implementation of standardized outcome reporting is urgently needed to minimize biased interpretation of data thereby enabling improved patient care and the elaboration of meaningful guidelines.