title: Reporting Weaknesses in Conference Abstracts of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies in Ophthalmology.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Conference abstracts present information that helps clinicians and researchers to decide whether to attend a presentation. They also provide a source of unpublished research that could potentially be included in systematic reviews. We systematically assessed whether conference abstracts of studies that evaluated the accuracy of a diagnostic test were sufficiently informative.
  
  
  METHODS
  We identified all abstracts describing work presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. Abstracts were eligible if they included a measure of diagnostic accuracy, such as sensitivity, specificity, or likelihood ratios. Two independent reviewers evaluated each abstract using a list of 21 items, selected from published guidance for adequate reporting. A total of 126 of 6310 abstracts presented were eligible. Only a minority reported inclusion criteria (5%), clinical setting (24%), patient sampling (10%), reference standard (48%), whether test readers were masked (7%), 2 × 2 tables (16%), and confidence intervals around accuracy estimates (16%). The mean number of items reported was 8.9 of 21 (SD, 2.1; range, 4-17).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Crucial information about study methods and results is often missing in abstracts of diagnostic studies presented at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Annual Meeting, making it difficult to assess risk for bias and applicability to specific clinical settings.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Bioinformatics, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Daniël A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Korevaar
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Bioinformatics, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands2Inserm U1153, Center for Epidemiology and Statistics Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris Descartes University, Pari.
authors.forename: Jérémie F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Bioinformatics, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Maurice W J
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: de Ronde
authors.affiliation: Department of Translational Surgery and Medicine, Eye Clinic, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
authors.forename: Gianni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Virgili
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland.
authors.forename: Kay
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dickersin
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Bioinformatics, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Patrick M M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Bossuyt
mesh_terms: D000043:Abstracting and Indexing / Q000592:standards*; D003226:Congresses as Topic; D003941:Diagnostic Techniques, Ophthalmological / Q000592:standards*; D005128:Eye Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D009885:Ophthalmology / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012015:Reference Standards; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012955:Societies, Medical / Q000458:organization & administration