The quality of reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies of optical coherence tomography in glaucoma.

Objective: To evaluate the quality of reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies using optical coherence tomography (OCT) in glaucoma.

Design: Descriptive series of published studies.

Participants: Published studies reporting a measure of the diagnostic accuracy of OCT for glaucoma.

Methods: Review of English language papers reporting measures of diagnostic accuracy of OCT for glaucoma. Papers were identified from a Medline literature search performed in June 2006. Articles were appraised using the 25 items provided by the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) initiative. Each item was recorded as full, partially, or not reported.

Main Outcome Measures: Degree of compliance with the STARD guidelines.

Results: Thirty papers were appraised. Eight papers (26.7%) fully reported more than half of the STARD items. The lowest number of fully reported items in a study was 5 and the highest was 17. Descriptions of key aspects of methodology frequently were missing. For example, details of participant sampling (e.g., consecutive or random selection) were described in only 8 (26.7%) of 30 publications. Measures of statistical uncertainty were reported in 18 (60%) of 30 publications. No single STARD item was fully reported by all the papers.

Conclusions: The standard of reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies in glaucoma using OCT was suboptimal. It is hoped that adoption of the STARD guidelines will lead to an improvement in reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies, enabling clearer evidence to be produced for the usefulness of OCT for the diagnosis of glaucoma.