PRESENTATION - DEFICIENCIES IN STRUCTURED MEDICAL ABSTRACTS

This study was carried out to determine if the content of structured a bstracts conforms with recommendations of the Ad Hoc Working Group for the critical appraisal of the medical literature as adopted by the An nals of Internal Medicine. The study design was a survey. All articles published in Annals of Internal Medicine in 1991, excluding editorial s, case-reports, literature reviews, decision analysis, studies in med ical education, descriptive studies of clinical and basic phenomena, a nd papers lacking a structured abstract, were studied. Of a total of 1 50 articles, 20 were excluded. The abstract and text of each article w ere assessed for the presence of the following items; patient selectio n criteria, statements concerning extrapolation of findings, need for further study, and whether or not the information should be used now. Number of refusers, drop outs and reason(s) for drop outs were assesse d for intervention and prospective cohort studies only. Deficiencies o f assessed items were noted in both abstracts and texts. For abstracts , patient selection criteria, numbers of refusers, number of drop outs and reason(s) for drop outs were reported in 44.6% (58/130), 3.1% (4/ 130), 16.9% (14/83) and 2.4% (2/83) respectively. These items were rep orted more frequently in the texts 87.7% (114/130), 9.2% (12/130), 60. 2% (50/83) and 37.3% (31/83) respectively (p < 0.05). Statements conce rning extrapolation of findings, need for further study and use of inf ormation now were also more frequent in texts than abstracts (p < 0.00 01). A large number of structured abstracts published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 1991, lack information recommended by the Ad Hoc Working Group. Our findings should not be extrapolated to other journ als requiring structured abstracts.