Brief Report
Randomized trials in emergency medicine journals, 2008 to 2011,☆☆

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajem.2012.06.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Study Objective

Knowledge of current areas of activity in emergency medicine research may improve collaboration among investigators and may help inform decisions about future research priorities. Randomized, controlled trials are a key component of research activity and an essential tool for improving care. We investigated the characteristics of randomized trials recently published in emergency medicine journals.

Methods

This was a retrospective analysis of randomized trials published in the 5 highest impact emergency medicine journals. PubMed was searched for reports of randomized trials involving human subjects indexed to MEDLINE between January 1, 2008, and December 31, 2011. Included trials were classified with respect to study topic, funding source, presence of age-related inclusion criteria, and country of origin.

Results

A total of 163 published studies were included for analysis. Pain management was the most commonly studied topic (n = 28, or 17%) followed by orthopedics (n = 24, or 15%), cardiovascular disease (n = 13, or 8%), and prehospital medicine (n = 13, or 8%). Less than half of studies received extramural funding support. Children were specifically examined in 22 (13%) of trials; only 5 trials (3%) specifically examined patients aged 60 or older.

Conclusions

Emergency medicine journals publish randomized trials addressing a wide range of clinical topics. Randomized trials focusing on geriatric patients are not commonly published in these journals.

Introduction

Clinical research provides the evidence base for improvements in the quality of emergency medical care and helps to create the unique body of knowledge that defines the specialty of emergency medicine. Randomized trials provide the highest available level of evidence to guide such improvements. Because of the breadth of emergency medicine research and the many journals in which this work may be published, identifying emergency medicine research is a significant challenge [1]. Furthermore, although priorities in emergency medicine research have been defined [1], [2], there is little available information about the current areas of emphasis in emergency medicine research. Defining active areas of emergency medicine research may facilitate collaboration among researchers, help clinicians and medical administrators identify study results that can inform policies and standards to improve patient care, and help researchers and funders identify future research priorities. Emergency medicine journals are an obvious and important mechanism for disseminating the results of randomized trials relevant to emergency medical care.

We sought to describe the research topics, funding sources, study populations, and country of origin of randomized trials recently published in emergency medicine journals.

Section snippets

Study design and trial selection

We conducted a descriptive study of randomized, controlled trials indexed to PubMed between January 1, 2008, and December 31, 2011, and published in the 5 emergency medicine journals with the highest impact factors: the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, Academic Emergency Medicine, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Injury, and Resuscitation [3]. Randomized trials were identified by searching the selected journals for articles classified by MEDLINE as “randomized controlled trials” and by

Results

After searching MEDLINE, 771 potentially relevant abstracts were assessed for study inclusion. Of these, 608 were excluded: 306 trials were animal, in vitro, or simulation-based studies; 143 were nonrandomized studies; 128 were review articles or meta-analyses; and 31 were secondary analyses of previously published data. This left 163 eligible articles for analysis. Overall, fewer than half of studies reported receiving funding from external sources, including the government (n = 35, or 20%),

Limitations

This study has several important limitations. We did not analyze emergency medicine research published in other specialty or general medical journals, which considerably constrains our ability to draw conclusions about the characteristics of all emergency medicine research. Certain types of trials, particularly studies related to trauma care and resuscitation, are often done with large numbers of patients and a large investment of research money and achieve results whose relevance extends

Discussion

Our results indicate that randomized trials recently published in emergency medicine journals address a wide range of clinical topics. Investigations into pain management, orthopedic injuries, prehospital case, and cardiovascular disease are particularly well represented. Most of the topics studied are published in multiple journals, and 4 of the 5 journals included in this study published on a broad range of clinical topics. Orthopedic studies were nearly exclusively published in Injury,

References (10)

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Cited by (10)

  • An investigation of the emergency medicine journals published in Turkey

    2015, Turkish Journal of Emergency Medicine
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    The scientific researches in medical journals help to improve the quality of patients' medical care and the doctors' level of knowledge. Additionally, the scientific studies in the field of medical emergency promote researchers' cooperation and help to decide the priorities of researches which will be conducted in the future.2 Two scientific journals of medicine are published in Turkey as Turkish Journal of Emergency Medicine and Journal of Academic Emergency Medicine.

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This study was supported by award number KL2 RR025746 and UL1 RR025747 from the National Center for Research Resources through the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Science Institute (Dr Platts-Mills).

☆☆

The National Center for Research Resources had no role in the design and conduct of the study; the collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Center for Research Resources, the National Institutes of Health, or the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Science Institute.

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