THE QUALITY OF RESEARCH ABSTRACTS IN EMERGENCY MEDICINE

Purpose: Physicians are inundated with a plethora of clinical studies that help them make evidence based decisions about patient care.  Physicians frequently rely upon the clarity and accuracy of research abstracts to guide them in selecting relevant studies to review.  The CONSORT guidelines for research abstracts seek to standardize research abstracts.  Using CONSORT guidelines for abstract reporting, our study analyzed the quality and accuracy of research abstracts in emergency medicine.

Method:  Five academic journals focused on clinical emergency medicine were selected for study.  These included Academy of Emergency Medicine Journal, Academy of Emergency Medicine, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Journal of Emergency Medicine, Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, and Resuscitation.  Three hundred forty-six research abstracts were evaluated for their adherence to CONSORT guidelines. 

Result: After disqualifying 133 studies (educational, manikin, and secondary analyses), 213 studies met our criteria for inclusion in our final analysis.  Our analysis showed that areas such as eligibility of patients (85.45%; 188/220), descriptions of interventions (71.82%; 158/220), and specific purpose statements or hypotheses (93.64%; 206/220) met CONSORT guidelines for research abstracts.  However, specific trial descriptions (24.55%; 54/220), descriptions of data collection settings (40.45%; 89/220), and especially randomization methods (3.36%; 8/220) rarely met CONSORT guideline standards.

Conclusion: The quality of reporting of research abstracts published in major emergency medicine journals is suboptimal.  While some of the CONSORT guidelines were generally well reported in the research abstracts we reviewed, many abstracts failed to meet all of the criteria set forth in the CONSORT guidelines.  Research abstracts should be held to the CONSORT guidelines in order to help physicians more easily select relevant research for patient care.