gms | German Medical Science

Introduction and Aims: Every year, thousands of articles are published on prognostic tumour markers, often with contradictory results for the same marker and disease. Many studies were so poorly reported that they lack key information that is needed in order to assess their results, reliability and clinical applicability. For papers published in five journals between January 2006 and April 2007 that has been demonstrated [1]. In 2005, the REMARK-guidelines for the reporting of prognostic marker studies have been published simultaneously in several journals, e.g. [2]. The aim of this project is to assess whether REMARK-guidelines have improved the quality of reporting.

Material and Methods: Using the same questionnaire and following the design of the earlier study as closely as possible [1], we planned to assess 50 recent papers (2011-12) from the same five journals included in the past study (10 each) whichh cited one of the REMARK-papers (group A). Furthermore, selected papers should be matched by journal and issue to 50 further papers not citing REMARK (group B).

Results: Despite over 1000 citations of REMARK-guidelines, we only found 10 eligible papers citing REMARK-guidelines in 2011-12 for three of the five selected journals. As a consequence, we had to revise our list of selected journals. Altogether, we selected 54 papers for group A and the same number for group B. Data extraction using a standardized questionnaire is complete. The analysis will done in a similar way as in [1] allowing direct comparisons in time (results from [1] compared to group A) and between papers citing REMARK or not (group A versus B).

We will present analyses of reporting of items on the REMARK checklist, with comparisons between time periods and between both groups of articles in the recent cohort.

Discussion: Several years after REMARK-guidelines were introduced, we expect to see improvements in reporting.