This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| PRISMA-DTA | |
|---|---|
| Name | PRISMA-DTA |
| Subject | Reporting guideline for diagnostic test accuracy systematic reviews |
| Established | 2018 |
| Derived from | PRISMA |
| Main authors | Matthew J. McInnes; Tari Turner; Libby Hutton |
| Field | Evidence synthesis; diagnostic accuracy |
PRISMA-DTA PRISMA-DTA is a reporting guideline designed to improve completeness and transparency of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of diagnostic test accuracy studies. It complements standards used in Cochrane reviews and aligns with reporting initiatives from organizations such as the World Health Organization, National Institutes of Health, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The guideline targets authors, editors, peer reviewers, and guideline developers engaged with diagnostic evidence synthesis for clinical practice and policy.
PRISMA-DTA emerged from the lineage of reporting initiatives including CONSORT, STROBE, and the original PRISMA statement, and it responds to persistent shortcomings documented in evaluations by groups in The BMJ, The Lancet, and JAMA. Concerns raised after major diagnostic controversies involving technologies promoted in reports linked to institutions like Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency motivated methodologists from institutions such as University of Oxford, McMaster University, and Institute of Public Health to produce a tailored checklist. Early methodological influences included meta-analytic frameworks developed at Cochrane Diagnostic Test Accuracy Working Group and statistical contributions from researchers affiliated with Harvard University and Stanford University.
The guideline was authored through a collaborative process involving methodologists, clinicians, journal editors, and stakeholders from bodies like World Health Organization and Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health. Development incorporated consensus methods similar to those used in GRADE and Delphi exercises convened with representatives from British Medical Journal, PLOS Medicine, and the Annals of Internal Medicine. PRISMA-DTA defines scope to cover systematic reviews and meta-analyses that assess sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratios, and other diagnostic accuracy metrics for tests evaluated across settings including tertiary centers like Mayo Clinic and public health laboratories such as those in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
PRISMA-DTA extends the original PRISMA checklist with items specific to index tests, target conditions, and reference standards, reflecting methodological standards advocated by Cochrane, International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, and the Equator Network. The checklist prompts reporting of study selection, index test description, clinical pathway implications, and statistical methods including bivariate models promoted in literature from University of Bristol and Institute of Clinical Trials and Methodology. Accompanying the checklist is a flow diagram conceptually similar to diagrams used in reviews published by The Lancet Global Health and BMJ Open, facilitating transparent reporting of search results across databases like MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CINAHL.
Journals such as BMJ, PLOS Medicine, and The Lancet encourage or require adherence to PRISMA-DTA for submission of diagnostic reviews, and editorial processes at publishers including Elsevier and Springer Nature have integrated the guideline into author instructions. Training and dissemination efforts have involved workshops at conferences like the International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication and collaborations with educational initiatives from Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Systematic review platforms and registries including PROSPERO and tools developed by teams at Cochrane incorporate PRISMA-DTA elements into protocol templates and data extraction workflows.
Empirical evaluations published in journals such as BMJ, JAMA Internal Medicine, and Annals of Internal Medicine indicate improved completeness of reporting in reviews that cite PRISMA-DTA, mirroring effects seen after adoption of CONSORT for trials. Citation analyses show uptake across academic centers including University College London and University of Toronto and in guideline development organizations like National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Methodological research from groups at McMaster University and Karolinska Institutet assesses how adherence affects reproducibility and meta-analytic estimates in diagnostic fields ranging from radiology at Mayo Clinic to molecular diagnostics associated with labs at Broad Institute.
Critics from venues such as Science and Nature Medicine note that PRISMA-DTA focuses on reporting rather than study design quality, echoing earlier critiques leveled at PRISMA and CONSORT extensions. Some stakeholders in regions represented by organizations like WHO Regional Office for Africa and Pan American Health Organization argue that guideline adoption is uneven due to resource constraints and limited editorial enforcement. Methodologists associated with Cochrane and statistical groups at Imperial College London have recommended complementary tools for risk of bias assessment, pointing to needs for more guidance on heterogeneity, applicability, and complex index tests evaluated in multicenter studies at institutions like Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Category:Reporting guidelines