Key result
Only ~47% of surgery and anesthesiology journals recommend adverse event reporting in author guidelines.
Why the study?
Standards for reporting surgical adverse events vary widely in the literature, which hinders efforts to measure safety and improve the quality of care.
Observational (n=1,409)
Less than half of surgery and anesthesiology journals recommend or require perioperative adverse event reporting, highlighting a need for standardized reporting guidelines to improve surgical safety.
Fewer than half of journals recommend AE reporting, limiting outcome transparency; leaves open whether policy mandates would improve surgical safety research.
BACKGROUND: Standards for reporting surgical adverse events (AEs) vary widely within the scientific literature. Failure to adequately capture AEs hinders efforts to measure the safety of healthcare delivery and improve the quality of care. The aim of the present study is to assess the prevalence and typology of perioperative AE reporting guidelines among surgery and anesthesiology journals. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In November 2021, three independent reviewers queried journal lists from the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) portal (www.scimagojr.com), a bibliometric indicator database for surgery and anesthesiology academic journals. Journal characteristics were summarized using SCImago, a bibliometric indicator database extracted from Scopus journal data. Quartile 1 (Q1) was considered the top quartile and Q4 bottom quartile based on the journal impact factor. Journal author guidelines were collected to determine whether AE reporting recommendations were included and, if so, the preferred reporting procedures. RESULTS: Of 1409 journals queried, 655 (46.5%) recommended surgical AE reporting. Journals most likely to recommend AE reporting were: by category surgery (59.1%), urology (53.3%), and anesthesia (52.3%); in top SJR quartiles (i.e. more influential); by region, based in Western Europe (49.8%), North America (49.3%), and the Middle East (48.3%). CONCLUSIONS: Surgery and anesthesiology journals do not consistently require or provide recommendations on perioperative AE reporting. Journal guidelines regarding AE reporting should be standardized and are needed to improve the quality of surgical AE reporting with the ultimate goal of improving patient morbidity and mortality.
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Sholklapper et al. (2023) conducted an observational in Surgical and anesthesiologic adverse events reporting in academic journals (n=1,409). Adverse event reporting guidelines was evaluated on Proportion of journals recommending surgical adverse event reporting. Only 46.5% of 1409 queried surgery and anesthesiology journals recommended some form of adverse event reporting in their author guidelines.
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