Background: Interest in outcomes research (OR) derives from the need to know the value and the effectiveness of health interventions, especially for oncology. We focused our research on OR in breast cancer, providing an overview of the trend of publications.
Patients and methods: We carried out a Medline search to retrieve all articles in English published from 2000 through 2007. The abstracts were reviewed and classified according to the research topics and the primary design of the trial.
Results: We selected 405 articles: their number remained constant until 2003, rose during 2004-2005 and decreased during the last 2 years. The most common topic was surgery (n = 234), alone or in association with other interventions. The category more investigated was the process. Clinical outcomes, and among them disease-free survival, were more frequent than other outcomes. The median value of 2007 Impact Factor of the journals publishing the selected references was 2.466 (range 0.272-25.547) and the median value of Citation Index was 8 (range 0-143).
Conclusions: Our research showed a decreasing interest in OR during the more recent years. We are hopeful that it will regenerate interest, particularly by the light of the funds allocated to the comparative effectiveness research in the United States.