Quality of information reporting in studies of standard and oncoplastic breast-conserving surgery

The aim of this systematic review was to establish the completeness of reporting of key patient, tumour, treatment, and outcomes information in the randomized-controlled trials (RCTs) of standard breast-conserving surgery (sBCS) considered to be the 'gold-standard', and to compare this with the reporting of the same key criteria for all published studies of oncoplastic breast-conserving surgery (oBCS). Pubmed (1966 to 1st April 2013), Ovid MEDLINE (1966 to 1st April 2013), EMBASE (1980 to 1st April 2013), and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Issue 4, 2013) were searched separately for the following terms: (i) 'oncoplastic AND breast AND surgery'; and (ii) 'therapeutic AND mammaplasty'. Only English language and full text articles were reviewed. Following a pilot evaluation of all studies, key reporting criteria were identified. 16 RCTs of sBCS (n = 11,767 patients) were included, and 53 studies met the inclusion criteria for oncoplastic BCS (n = 3236 patients), none of which were RCTs. No study reported all of the criteria identified, with a mean of 64% of key criteria (range, 55-75%) reported in studies of sBCS, and 54% of criteria (range, 10-85%) reported in studies of oBCS. It is therefore evident that there is much room for improvement in the quality of reporting is BCS studies. Standards are proposed to give future studies of BCS a framework for reporting key information and outcomes.