PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Scaffidi, Michael A.
AU  - Gimpaya, Nikko
AU  - Li, Juana
AU  - Bansal, Rishi
AU  - Verma, Yash
AU  - Elsolh, Karam
AU  - Donn, Gemma M.
AU  - Panjwani, Abhishek
AU  - Khan, Rishad
AU  - Grover, Samir C.
TI  - Completeness of reporting for COVID-19 case reports, January to April 2020: a meta-epidemiologic study
AID  - 10.9778/cmajo.20200140
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - CMAJ Open
PG  - E295--E301
VI  - 9
IP  - 1
4099  - http://www.cmajopen.ca/content/9/1/E295.short
4100  - http://www.cmajopen.ca/content/9/1/E295.full
SO  - CMAJ2021 Jan 01; 9
AB  - Background: The quality of case reports, which are often the first reported evidence for a disease, may be negatively affected by a rush to publication early in a pandemic. We aimed to determine the completeness of reporting (COR) for case reports published on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).Methods: We conducted a systematic search of the PubMed database for all single-patient case reports of confirmed COVID-19 published from Jan. 1 to Apr. 24, 2020. All included case reports were assessed for adherence to the CARE (Case Report) 31-item checklist, which was used to create a composite COR score. The primary outcome was the mean COR score assessed by 2 independent raters. Secondary outcomes included whether there was a change in overall COR score with certain publication factors (e.g., publication date) and whether there was a linear relation between COR and citation count and between COR scores and social media attention.Results: Our search identified 196 studies that were published in 114 unique journals. We found that the overall mean COR score was 54.4%. No one case report included all of the 31 CARE checklist items. There was no significant correlation between COR with either citation count or social media attention.Interpretation: We found that the overall COR for case reports on COVID-19 was poor. We suggest that journals adopt common case-reporting standards to improve reporting quality.