Physicians Seek Greater Clinical Detail From Medical Research Articles

Only 11 percent of 262 scientific articles in five prominent medical journals studied by University of Florida researchers contained enough information to aid in treatment, according to a University of Florida Shands Cancer Center press release.

“This study came out of our clinical frustration,” said Thomas George Jr., M.D., a member of the UF Shands Cancer Center and director of UF’s gastrointestinal oncology program in the College of Medicine, about the research published May 19, 2010, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. “We were trying to teach our students and fellows how to care for patients with cancer and prescribe therapeutics safely. We had a really hard time finding the information we needed to provide care for these patients in the original scientific articles.”

A separate, multidisciplinary group of cancer clinicians were asked to identify the minimum information they needed from a scientific report to guide clinical care. The list included the name of the drug and how it was administered. The team analyzed 262 reports published from 2005 to 2008 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, The New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Cancer and Blood. The journals covered 73 percent of the minimum information required, ranging from 71 percent in Cancer to 80 percent in the JNCI. The JCO, which published 63 percent of the studies analyzed, included 73 percent of the necessary information.

Although the journals usually reported the drug dose, only 43 percent of the papers published necessary premedication, and 42 percent reported how to adjust dosages when the therapy proved toxic. The authors concluded that only 11 percent of the papers covered the necessary minimum information.

Based on these results, the research team recommended that journal editors and publishers revamp the way they edit and report on clinical trials even though it would “represent a paradigm shift that is not likely to be embraced right away.

“It just boils down to willpower on the part of journal editors to agree that this is an important need,” Dr. George said. “I think the scientific community — the publishers, the editors and even the investigators who conduct the studies — have been appropriately focused on justifying the scientific methods and merit of the study. We’re just taking it to the next logical step, which is, how do we apply these results to the masses of patients who need to benefit from scientific progress?”