Publication bias in reproductive research

Publication bias is defined as any tendency on the part of investigators or editors to fail to publish study results on the basis of the direction or strength of the findings. This may lead to overestimation of treatment effe cts in published work. Inappropriate decisions about patient management may result. We investigated what proportion of abstracts at the European Socie ty of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) annual meeting eventually r eached full publication, what was the time to publication, and which factor s might have affected publication. Among the 2691 abstracts of six ESHRE an nual meetings, 151 (5.6%) reporting randomized controlled trials (RCT) were identified. Comprehensive searches of electronic databases and handsearchi ng of the two major journals in the field yielded 79 full publications pert aining to these abstracts. Kaplan-Meier analysis estimated 56% of RCT abstr acts to be eventually published in full, the median time to publication bei ng 32.5 months. Positive outcome (i,e, significant results) did not affect the publication rate, and neither did sample size, the subject category, or the native language (English/non-English) of the country of origin. Oral p resentations resulted in eventual full publication significantly more frequ ently (69%) than posters (42%), It is concluded that a considerable publica tion deficit, but not a publication bias, exists for RCT in reproductive re search.