Clinical studies in German health care journals: publication quality and assessment

Tags: Poster
Rüther A, Galandi D, Antes G

Introduction: Identification of all relevant randomised controlled trials (RCT) is crucial for unbiased reviews. Studies published in General health care journals, especially in those being not listed in Medline or Embase, may be overlooked by specific review groups (CRG) more concentrating on specialised journals dealing with the subject of the review. For this reason a project was launched to organise the handsearch of these Journals in Europe (funded by the EU program Biomed 1 and the German Ministry of Health). All RCT and controlled clinical trials (CCT) found will be included into the Cochrane Database of Clinical Trials and into Medline, even if Medline does not contain the publishing journal.

Objective: The results of handsearching German language general health care journals will be reported. Characteristics and quality of detected studies will be considered. The amount of studies already listed in Medline will be analysed.

Methods: To date 15 German language general health care journals (age group from 1948 1996) were handsearched by students. For quality control, every journal was again handsearched in five year intervals by scientists. The medical subject of each study was determined. A Medline search was performed for title and author of every identified study. Quality was assessed by applying a scoring system regarding randomisation, double-blinding and drop-outs (Jadad A. et al: Assessing the quality of randomised clinical trials: Is blinding necessary? Controlled Clinical Trials 17:1 12 (1996)).

Results: A large amount of studies was identified by handsearching. Over the searched interval the main medical topics change from infectious diseases, gynaecology, and the treatment of pain to cardiology, diabetes and psychiatry. The proportion of gastroenterology and oncology remains stable. Medline contained about 60% of the studies found by handsearching. The number of studies per year rose steadily from 1970 and dropped dramatically after a peak in 1990. The quality of the studies increased since 1970.

Discussion: The large number of controlled and randomised clinical trials published in German general health care journals underlines the importance of searching non English medical journals, in particular general health care journals which are not considered by specific CRGs. This indicates that CRGs should consider to include national medical journals into their handsearch strategy.