title: Quality of registration for clinical trials published in emergency medicine journals.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  In 2005, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors established clinical trial registration as a requirement for articles submitted to member journals, with the goal of improving the transparency of clinical research. The objective of this study is to characterize the registration of clinical trials published in emergency medicine journals.
  
  
  METHODS
  Randomized trials involving human subjects and published between June 1, 2008, and May 31, 2011 in the 5 emergency medicine journals with the highest impact factors were included. We assessed the clarity of registered primary outcomes, timing of registration relative to patient enrollment, and consistency between registered and published outcomes.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of the 123 trials included, registry entries were identified for 57 (46%). Of the 57 registered studies, 45 (79%) were registered after the initiation of subject enrollment, 9 (16%) had registered outcomes that were unclear, and 26 (46%) had discrepancies between registered and published outcomes. Only 5 studies were registered before patient enrollment with a clear primary outcome that was consistent with the published primary outcome. Annals of Emergency Medicine was the only journal in which the majority of trials were registered.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Current compliance with clinical trial registration guidelines is poor among trials published in emergency medicine journals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Christiana Care Hospital, Newark, DE, USA. cjones.unc@gmail.com
authors.forename: Christopher W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Timothy F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Platts-Mills
mesh_terms: D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012042:Registries / Q000592:standards*