CONSORT in China

Tags: Oral
Chen Y1, Wang M2
1School of Basic Medical Sciences, West China School of Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan, China, 2Sichuan University, West China School of Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Background: CONSORT and other related reporting guidelines have made impressive progress in the past 14 years. The publication of CONSORT 2010 Statement in several high impact factor medical journals in the world indicated that the content of reporting quality of RCTs is being perfected. However, the dissemination and implementation of CONSORT in China is unknown. Objective: To describe the current status and development of reporting guidelines such as CONSORT and PRISMA in China. Methods: We searched three main medical databases CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure/Chinese Academic Journals full text Database), VIP (a full text database of China) and CBM (China Biomedicine Database) using the term ‘‘CONSORT’’ from 1996∼2010. Results: The CONSORT was first introduced into China in 1997. There were 91 papers related to CONSORT and other reporting guidelines. 33 papers were translation (36%), 22 papers were reviews on reporting quality of RCTs (24%) in China, the other papers were about comments, letters and so on. Most papers (29) published in Chinese journal of evidence based medicine; Less than 5% Chinese clinical medical journals which indexed in MEDLINE or EMBASE had recommended CONSORT in their ‘‘Instruction to authors’’. Conclusions: The dissemination and implementation of CONSORT in China need to be improved. In order to make the achievement of the CONSORT series benefit more widely, especially in developing countries and non-native English speaking countries, we would like to suggest three measures on which we should focus that effort. Firstly, medical editors should recognize and pay more attention to the reporting guidelines because their key roles in the publication and spreading medical information; secondly, medical researchers and clinicians should actively carry out the clinical trial registration policy; last but not least, medical schools should introduced reporting guidelines into medical education as early as possible.