Completeness of reporting for COVID-19 case reports, January to April 2020: a meta-epidemiologic study.
CMAJ Open
; 9(1): E295-E301, 2021.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1160661
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
The quality of case reports, which are often the first reported evidence for a disease, may be negatively affected by a rush to publication early in a pandemic. We aimed to determine the completeness of reporting (COR) for case reports published on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).METHODS:
We conducted a systematic search of the PubMed database for all single-patient case reports of confirmed COVID-19 published from Jan. 1 to Apr. 24, 2020. All included case reports were assessed for adherence to the CARE (Case Report) 31-item checklist, which was used to create a composite COR score. The primary outcome was the mean COR score assessed by 2 independent raters. Secondary outcomes included whether there was a change in overall COR score with certain publication factors (e.g., publication date) and whether there was a linear relation between COR and citation count and between COR scores and social media attention.RESULTS:
Our search identified 196 studies that were published in 114 unique journals. We found that the overall mean COR score was 54.4%. No one case report included all of the 31 CARE checklist items. There was no significant correlation between COR with either citation count or social media attention.INTERPRETATION:
We found that the overall COR for case reports on COVID-19 was poor. We suggest that journals adopt common case-reporting standards to improve reporting quality.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Publishing
/
Checklist
/
Research Report
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Case report
/
Diagnostic study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Reviews
/
Systematic review/Meta Analysis
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
CMAJ Open
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Similar
MEDLINE
...
LILACS
LIS