Adherence to the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) 2015 Guidelines in Acute Point-of-Care Ultrasound Research

Abstract

IMPORTANCE Incomplete reporting of diagnostic accuracy research impairs assessment of risk of bias and limits generalizability. Point-of-care ultrasound has become an important diagnostic tool for acute care physicians, but studies assessing its use are of varying methodological quality. OBJECTIVE To assess adherence to the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) 2015 guidelines in the literature on acute care point-of-care ultrasound. EVIDENCE REVIEW MEDLINE was searched to identify diagnostic accuracy studies assessing pointof-care ultrasound published in critical care, emergency medicine, or anesthesia journals from 2016 to 2019. Studies were evaluated for adherence to the STARD 2015 guidelines, with the following variables analyzed: journal, country, STARD citation, STARD-adopting journal, impact factor, patient population, use of supplemental material, and body region. Data analysis was performed in November 2019. FINDINGS Seventy-four studies were included in this systematic review for assessment. Overall adherence to STARD was moderate, with 66% (mean [SD], 19.7 [2.9] of 30 items) of STARD items reported. Items pertaining to imaging specifications, patient population, and readers of the index test were frequently reported (>66% of studies). Items pertaining to blinding of readers to clinical data and to the index or reference standard, analysis of heterogeneity, indeterminate and missing data, and time intervals between index and reference test were either moderately (33%-66%) or infrequently (<33%) reported. Studies in STARD-adopting journals (mean [SD], 20.5 [2.9] items in adopting journals vs 18.6 [2.3] items in nonadopting journals; P = .002) and studies citing STARD (mean [SD], 21.3 [0.9] items in citing studies vs 19.5 [2.9] items in nonciting studies; P = .01) reported more items. Variation by country and journal of publication were identified. No differences in STARD adherence were identified by body region imaged (mean [SD]

Adherence to the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (STARD): a survey of four journals in laboratory medicine

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study investigating the adherence to the 2015 STARD of DTA studies published in medical laboratory journals. In keeping with the results of previous investigations on point-of-care ultrasound research (8) and magnetic resonance imaging (9), we found that the overall reporting quality of DTA articles published in medical laboratory journals was unsatisfactory. For example, the lowest number of reported items was 7, which means that the average study report includes only 20% of the STARD items.…”

Lung ultrasound immediately after birth predicts the need for surfactant therapy in very- and extremely preterm infants, the DOLFIN Jr Study

“…Study sites were two perinatal hospitals, Monash Medical Centre (MMC) and the Royal Women's Hospital (RWH), in Melbourne, Australia, together averaging more than 300 very and extremely preterm births per year. This study is reported in accordance with the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) guidelines [38,39].…”

Diagnostic Accuracy of Early Systolic Notching in Pulmonary Embolism

“…Finally, the sample size required to yield a 10% width of a 2‐sided 95% CI, for 90% sensitivity and specificity, with 20% prevalence of PE was calculated as 173 subjects 8 . STARD 2015 guidelines for reporting diagnostic accuracy studies was followed as a reference for the design of this study 9 …”