Abstract
Background
Patient-reported outcome (PRO) studies are essential the assessment of surgical procedures in plastic surgery. An accepted and validated questionnaire is the Breast-Q.
Objectives
This study aims to assess the quality of PRO studies in plastic surgery utilizing the Breast-Q questionnaire.
Methods
This study included two steps: (1) A systematic review of 23 key-criteria assessing the quality of survey-research in studies utilizing the Breast-Q which were published between 2015-2018; (2) Review of current guidance for survey-research in journals related to Plastic Surgery and Breast Surgery which were included in the systematic review.
Results
79 studies were included in the systematic review. Many key-criteria were poorly reported: 51.9% of the studies did not provide a defined response rate and almost 90% did not provide a method for analysis of non-response error. 67.1% lacked a description of the sample's representativeness of the population of interest, and 82.3% did not present a sample size calculation. 11.4% of papers failed to describe the data analyzing methods; in 27.8% the data analysis which was presented could not allow replication of the results. Of the 16 journals in Plastic Surgery and Breast Surgery that their "Instruction to Authors" were reviewed, 15 (93.7%) did not provide any guidance for survey reporting.
Conclusions
The majority of key criteria are under-reported by authors publishing their survey-research in peer-reviewed journals in the fields of plastic and breast surgery. There is an urgent need for constructing a well-developed reporting guideline for survey-research in plastic surgery and particularly in breast surgery.
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