Focus on the expected quality of reporting in SBRT/radiosurgery prospective studies: how far have we come in 30 years?

Abstract

Objectives: We aimed at describing and assessing the quality of reporting in all published prospective trials about radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT).

Methods: The Medline database was searched for. The reporting of study design, patients' and radiotherapy characteristics, previous and concurrent cancer treatments, acute and late toxicities and assessment of quality of life were collected.

Results: 114 articles - published between 1989 and 2019 - were analysed. 21 trials were randomised (18.4%). Randomisation information was unavailable in 59.6% of the publications. Data about randomisation, ITT analysis and whether the study was multicentre or not, had been significantly less reported during the 2010-2019 publication period than before (respectively 29.4% vs 57.4% (p < 0.001), 20.6% vs 57.4% (p < 0.001), 48.5% vs 68.1% (p < 0.001). 89.5% of the articles reported the number of included patients. Information about radiation total dose was available in 86% of cases and dose per fraction in 78.1%. Regarding the method of dose prescription, the prescription isodose was the most reported information (58.8%). The reporting of radiotherapy characteristics did not improve during the 2010 s-2019s. Acute and late high-grade toxicity was reported in 37.7 and 30.7%, respectively. Their reporting decreased in recent period, especially for all-grade late toxicities (p = 0.044).

Conclusion: It seems necessary to meet stricter specifications to improve the quality of reporting.

Advances in knowledge: Our work results in one of the rare analyses of radiosurgery and SBRT publications. Literature must include necessary information to first, ensure treatments can be compared and reproduced and secondly, to permit to decide on new standards of care.

Figure 1.

Flow chart about selection of trials for the analysis. Initial screening was performed with PubMed/Medline and then, closed with Current Contents, Embase, Oncoline, Elsevier Biobase and Scopus databases and, finally, selected references were crossed with clinicaltrials.gov.