QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF PHARMACOECONOMIC ABSTRACTS OF ORIGINAL RESEARCHARTICLES IN SELECTED JOURNALS

OBJECTIVE: To assess and compare the quality of pharmacoeconomic abstr acts of cost-minimization analyses, cost-effectiveness analyses, cost- utility analyses, and cost-benefit analyses of original research artic les in selected medical, pharmacy, and health economics journals, METH ODS: MEDLINE was used to identify articles in selected medical, pharma cy, and health economics journals using the MeSH word ''economic'' and text words ''cost'' and ''pharmacoeconomic''; the journal PharmacoEco nomics was searched manually, All retrieved abstracts were evaluated, Original, comparative (at least one drug comparator) research articles (1990-1994) reporting both costs and clinical outcomes were included in the quality analysis. Abstract quality was assessed as a percentage by using a checklist with 29 objective criteria. Group consensus prod uced interrater reliability greater than 0.8. RESULTS: One thousand tw o published abstracts labeled with the above key words were identified , Of these, 951 were excluded from quality assessment because they wer e not original research (18%), were not pharmacoeconomic research (47% ), lacked a drug comparator (35%), or did not report a clinical outcom e (0.5%). Thus, the quality of 51 (5% of the total) remaining abstract s was assessed. Overall scores were 56% in 1990 and 58% in 1994 (p = 0 .094). Medical articles scored highest (61.5%; n = 25), pharmacy artic les were next (54.3%; n = 5), and health economics articles were lowes t (53.4%; n = 21) (p = 0.091); structured abstracts scored significant ly higher (62.5%; n = 20) than unstructured (53.3%; n = 31) (p = 0.003 ). CONCLUSIONS: Abstract quality was generally poor, with no significa nt change in quality over time. Medical journals scored highest, proba bly because they use structured abstracts. Guidelines for structured p harmacoeconomic abstracts may assist in improving quality.