Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Quality standards are needed for reporting of test accuracy studies for animal diseases.
- Journal:
- Preventive veterinary medicine
- Year:
- 2010
- Authors:
- Gardner, Ian A
- Affiliation:
- Department of Medicine and Epidemiology · United States
Plain-English summary
This paper talks about the importance of having clear and complete guidelines for reporting how accurate tests are for diagnosing animal diseases. While many medical journals encourage following these guidelines, veterinary journals haven't been as specific. Having these standards helps veterinarians and other healthcare professionals understand test results better, which ultimately benefits both pets and their owners. The authors also discuss how these guidelines could be adapted for animal studies and suggest ways to improve the quality of research in this area. Overall, the paper emphasizes the need for better reporting standards to enhance the reliability of test accuracy studies in veterinary medicine.
Abstract
The STARD statement (www.stard-statement.org) emphasizes complete and transparent reporting of key elements of test accuracy studies. Guidelines for authors in many biomedical journals recommend adherence to these standards but explicit recommendations by editors of veterinary journals are limited. Adherence to standards benefits end-users of tests including doctors, veterinarians and other healthcare professionals and the human and animal patients in which the tests are used. Reporting standards also provide a structured basis for researchers and graduate students to prepare manuscripts, and subsequently can be a useful adjunct to the peer-review process. This paper discusses the purpose of STARD and its possible modification for animal disease studies, variation in reporting and design quality in human and animal disease studies, use of a different instrument (QUADAS) for assessing methodological quality, and provides some recommendations for the future. Finally, the contributions of Dr. Hollis Erb to improvements in methodological and reporting qualities of test accuracy studies in Preventive Veterinary Medicine are described.
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Search related cases →Original publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20950876/