ArticleBMJ open2018
Registration and publication of emergency and elective randomised controlled trials in surgery: a cohort study from trial registries.
Article in BMJ open, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Time to publication for results of clinical trials.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Randomized controlled trials in emergency settings: Taking a HEADSTART on acute type A aortic dissection trials.Journal of vascular surgery cases and innovative techniques · 2024Article
- High complication and mortality rates after emergency groin hernia repair: a nationwide register-based cohort study.Hernia : the journal of hernias and abdominal wall surgery · 2022Article
- WSES guidelines updates.World journal of emergency surgery : WJES · 2020Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesEmergency surgical practice constitutes 50% of the workload for surgeons, but there is a lack of high quality randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in emergency surgery. This study aims to establish the differences between the registration, completion and publication of emergency and elective surgical trials.
designThe clinicaltrials.gov and ISRCTN.com trials registry databases were searched for RCTs between 12 July 2010 and 12 July 2012 using the keyword 'surgery'. Publications were systematically searched for in Pubmed, MEDLINE and EMBASE.
participantsResults with no surgical interventions were excluded. The remaining results were manually categorised into 'emergency' or 'elective' and 'surgical' or 'adjunct' by two reviewers. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Number of RCTs registered in emergency versus elective surgery. SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Number of RCTs published in emergency versus elective surgery; reasons why trials remain unpublished; funding, sponsorship and impact of published articles; number of adjunct trials registered in emergency and elective surgery.
results2700 randomised trials were registered. 1173 trials were on a surgical population and of these, 414 trials were studying surgery. Only 9.4% (39/414) of surgical trials were in emergency surgery. The proportion of trials successfully published did not significantly differ between emergency and elective surgery (0.46 vs 0.52; mean difference (MD) -0.06, 95% CI -0.24 to 0.12). Unpublished emergency surgical trials were statistically equally likely to be terminated early compared with elective trials (0.33 vs 0.16; MD -0.18, 95% CI -0.06 to 0.41). Low accrual accounted for a similar majority in both groups (0.43 vs 0.46; MD -0.04, 95% CI -0.48 to 0.41). Unpublished trials in both groups were statistically equally likely to still be planning publication (0.52 vs 0.71; MD -0.18, 95% CI -0.43 to 0.07).
conclusionFewer RCTs are registered in emergency than elective surgery. Once trials are registered both groups are equally likely to be published.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.