Applying the STARD (Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy) checklist to the 2007 Transfusion article ‘Evaluation of a new enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for detection of Chagas antibody in US blood donors’

A group of scientists and journal editors developed the STARD (Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy) checklist to improve the reporting of diagnostic accuracy. This checklist provides a standardised framework to ensure all relevant information is considered and no potentially important parameters are inadvertently overlooked. Whilst the quality of reporting is crucial to the understanding of a test's potential performance characteristics, this checklist can and should be used not only to assess the reporting itself, but also to question any potential flaws in the assay inadvertently overlooked or not challenged by others. This article uses the STARD checklist to look at a recent report on a new assay for Chagas disease and examines the strength of this work against a standard review tool. Potential issues associated with the reporting of the work as well as potential issues with the assay are identified and additional questions are posed that might help clarify the issues identified.