| Keywords |
• Diagnostic • Low reporting quality • Protocols • Reproducibility |
| Problem(s) |
• No registered or published protocol • Methods not described to enable replication • Individual study characteristics not reported sufficiently • Low reporting (PRISMA) quality |
| Article Type | Empirical |
| Article Subtype | Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review |
| First Author Country | Canada |
| Checklists |
• PRISMA-DTA |
| Aim | To assess the completeness of reporting of 100 diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) systematic reviews published in MEDLINE between October 2017 to January 2018 using the (recently developed) PRISMA-DTA guidelines. |
| Level of Investigation | Descriptive |
| Summary of Findings | Infrequently reported items in the main reports of included systematic reviews related to protocol registration, characteristics of included studies, results synthesis, and definitions used in data extraction. Infrequently reported items from PRISMA-DTA for the included abstracts were funding information, strengths and limitations, characteristics of included studies, and assessment of applicability. Variability in reporting by country of the corresponding author was identified with Canadian authors demonstrating the most complete reporting, compared with China, which had the lowest number of reported items. Completeness of reporting of studies published in higher impact factor journals reported more items than studies published in lower impact factor journals |
| Number of systematic reviews included | 100 |
| Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed | 881 |
| Treatment impacted | No |
| Treatment impacted description | |
| Interpretation impacted | Not Applicable |
| Interpretation impacted description |
