STARD 2015 was reproducible in a large set of studies on glaucoma

Gianni Virgili; Manuele Michelessi; Alba Miele; Francesco Oddone; Giada Crescioli; Valeria Fameli; Ersilia Lucenteforte

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0186209

STARD 2015 was reproducible in a large set of studies on glaucoma

PLoS One. 2017 Oct 12;12(10):e0186209. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0186209. eCollection 2017.

Authors

Gianni Virgili¹, Manuele Michelessi², Alba Miele¹, Francesco Oddone², Giada Crescioli³, Valeria Fameli⁴, Ersilia Lucenteforte³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Translational Surgery and Medicine, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
² IRCS Fondazione G.B. Bietti, Rome, Italy.
³ Department of Neurosciences, Psychology, Drug Research and Child Health (NEUROFARBA), University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
⁴ Ophthalmology unit, Department of Sens, Organs, University of Rome "Sapienza", Rome, Italy.

Abstract

Aim: To investigate the reproducibility of the updated Standards for the Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies tool (STARD 2015) in a set of 106 studies included in a Cochrane diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) systematic review of imaging tests for diagnosing manifest glaucoma.

Methods: One senior rater with DTA methodological and clinical expertise used STARD 2015 on all studies, and each of three raters with different training profiles assessed about a third of the studies.

Results: Raw agreement was very good or almost perfect between the senior rater and an ophthalmology resident with DTA methods training, acceptable with a clinical rater with little DTA methods training, and only moderate with a pharmacology researcher with general, but not DTA, systematic review training and no clinical expertise. The relationship between adherence with STARD 2015 and methodological quality with QUADAS 2 was only partial and difficult to investigate, suggesting that raters used substantial context knowledge in risk of bias assessment.

Conclusions: STARD 2015 proved to be reproducible in this specific research field, provided that both clinical and DTA methodological expertise are achieved through training of its users.

MeSH terms

Data Accuracy
Diagnostic Tests, Routine / standards*
Glaucoma / diagnosis*
Humans
Observer Variation
Reproducibility of Results
Research Design / standards

Grants and funding

The contribution of the IRCCS Fondazione Bietti in this paper was supported by the Italian Ministry of Health and by Fondazione Roma. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.