Misreporting of Patient-Relevant and Study Design Elements in Anesthesiology Randomized Controlled Trials: An...

Background/Objectives: The quality of trial data reporting within the field of anesthesiology has, to date, been insufficiently examined. This study aims to investigate the consistency of reporting for WHO Data Set Items, trial outcomes, and adverse events between the data reported in ClinicalTrials.gov and the corresponding peer-reviewed publications in a cohort of anesthetic-related randomized controlled trials (RCTs) subject to the FDAAA. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, we investigated RCTs performed on 29 drugs in anesthesiology. We examined data reporting for eight categories, including the results and outcome probability measures, adverse events, all-cause mortality, study size, study outcome, study arm, selection criteria, and date of enrollment. We also examined compliance with the ClinicalTrials.gov registration deadline. Using descriptive statistics, we described the reporting reliability in both trial registration and corresponding publication data. Differences in the frequencies of discrepant or inadequate data reporting between selected subgroups were analyzed. Results: We identified 258 trials from 2009 to 2022 from ClinicalTrials.gov with corresponding publications. Of these, 28.7% were retrospectively registered. Discrepancies in reporting results occurred in 33.3% of the trials, with serious adverse events in 62.4% and other adverse events in 67.4% of the trials. Primary outcomes were reported much more consistently than secondary ones (77.5% vs. 27.9%). The selection criteria (24%) and enrollment date (29.5%) were the least consistently reported data categories. The only data item with improved reporting over time was all-cause mortality. Conclusions: Trial data in anesthesiology clinical trials continue to be misreported. Responsible parties involved in the peer-review process should consider using trial data registration forms as valuable sources for validating the integrity of trial data. Additionally, discrepancies along manuscript progression from submission to publication raise the question about the reliability of both registered and published data as sources for clinical decisions and meta-research.