Assessing Adherence to the PRISMA-DTA Guideline in Diagnostic Test Accuracy Systematic Reviews: A Five-Year Follow-up Analysis.

Background: We evaluated reporting of diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) systematic reviews using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA)-DTA and PRISMA-DTA for abstracts.

Methods: We searched MEDLINE for recent DTA systematic reviews (September 2023-Mar 2024) to achieve a sample size of 100. Analyses evaluated adherence to PRISMA-DTA (and abstracts), on a per-item basis. Association of reporting with journal, country, impact factor (IF), index-test type, subspecialty area, use of supplemental material, PRISMA citation, word count, and PRISMA adoption was evaluated. Comparison to the baseline evaluation from 2019 was done. Protocol: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/P25TE.

Results: Overall adherence (n = 100) was 78% (20.3/26.0 items, SD = 2.0) for PRISMA-DTA and 52% (5.7/11.0 items, SD = 1.6) for abstracts. Infrequently reported items (<33% of studies): eligibility criteria, definitions for data extraction, synthesis of results, and characteristics of the included studies. Infrequently reported items in abstracts were characteristics of the included studies, strengths and limitations, and funding. Reporting completeness for full text was minimally higher in studies in higher IF journals [20.7 vs 19.8 items; 95% confidence interval (95%CI) (0.09; 1.77)], as well as studies that cited PRISMA [21.1 vs 20.1 items; 95%CI (0.04; 1.95)], or used supplemental material (20.7 vs 19.2 items; 95%CI (0.63; 2.35)]. Variability in reporting was not associated with author country, journal, abstract word count limitations, PRISMA adoption, structured abstracts, study design, subspecialty, open-access status, or index test. No association with word counts was observed among full text or abstracts. Compared to the baseline evaluation, reporting was improved for full texts [71% to 78%; 95%CI (1.18; 2.26)] but not for abstracts [50% to 52%; 95%CI (-0.20; 0.60)].

Conclusions: Compared to the baseline evaluation published in 2019, we observed modest improved adherence to PRISMA-DTA and no improvement in PRISMA-DTA for abstracts reporting.