SynthesisHealth communication2020
Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs and the Patient-Prescriber Encounter: A Systematic Review.
Synthesis in Health communication, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 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
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pharmaceutical policies: effects of policies regulating drug marketing.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2023Pooled it
- Consumer Understanding of Prescription Drug Indications in Direct-to-Consumer Television Advertisements.Therapeutic innovation & regulatory science · 2025Trial
- Critical Test of the Beneficial Consequences of Lifting the Ban on Direct-to-Consumer Advertising for Prescription Drugs in Italy: Experimental Exposure and Questionnaire Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Trial
- Covert Promotional Cancer-Related Content in Korean Search Engines: Computational Content Analysis of Naver and Google.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Trends and patterns of medical stimulant use by US adults.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Clinicians' Reactions to Point-of-Care Advertising in Electronic Health Records.Therapeutic innovation & regulatory science · 2026Article
- Article
- Developing personas to examine older adult engagement with televised direct-to-consumer advertisements: A theory based approach.Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy · 2025Article
- Equitable Healthcare Access for Type 2 Diabetes Patients Under a Low-Income Group Health Care Scheme: A Sustainable Development Goal Perspective.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Patients as Consumers: Reflections on the FDA's New Rule on Direct-to-Consumer Advertising.American journal of preventive medicine · 2025Article
- #SharingHEOR: Developing Modern Media for Communication and Dissemination of Health Economics and Outcomes Research.Applied health economics and health policy · 2024Article
- Identifying and Prioritising Behaviours to Slow Antimicrobial Resistance.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Article
- Knowledge and Practice of Antibiotic Management and Prudent Prescribing among Polish Medical Doctors.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- The Hemophilia Gene Therapy Patient Journey: Questions and Answers for Shared Decision-Making.Patient preference and adherence · 2022Article
- Content Analysis of 2012-2019 FDA Warning Letters and Notices of Violations using the Economic, Clinical, and Humanistic Outcomes (ECHO) Model.Innovations in pharmacy · 2021Article
- EDITORIAL COMMENT.Urology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
We systematically reviewed the research on patients' and prescribers' perceptions of, and self-reported behaviors prompted by, exposure to direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) (For ease of reading we use the term "advertising" to encompass advertising and promotional labeling. Broad use of this term does not imply endorsement by FDA) of prescription drugs that occurs in the context of a clinical encounter. This research offers an important perspective on the broader goal of incorporating patient and prescriber voices in decision-making. Outcomes included patient information seeking, medication adherence, patient requests for DTCA-promoted prescription drugs, prescribing behaviors, and perceptions of the patient-prescriber relationship and interactions. We searched PubMed and other databases from 1982-2017 and identified 38 studies meeting our study criteria. Of these, 24 studies used patient-reported outcomes and 18 used prescriber-reported outcomes (four used both). Studies suggested some potential benefits of exposure to DTCA, including patients' enhanced information-seeking, increased patient requests for appropriate prescriptions (when addressing potential underuse) and patients' perceptions of higher-quality interactions with prescribers. Most prescribers perceived a neutral influence on the quality of their clinical interactions with patients regarding DTCA. Harms included patients receiving prescriptions for drugs that were not appropriate for them or that the patients did not need, and the potential for DTCA to interfere with medication adherence in some populations, such as those with mental illness. The potential benefits of DTCA on the patient-provider encounter must be balanced with the potential for harms.
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.